These men and women, of course, do not all work alike. Some have more independence than others. Some write columns regularly, some only occasionally or not at all. Some, like Ms. Byrd of The Washington Post, are retained on a contract basis. Most are on the newspaper's regular payroll.
None has authority to hire or fire other journalists.
Some have authority to order corrections to be published. Some participate as observers in the daily news planning meetings. All provide their editors with internal critiques in one form or another. But whatever their differences, I think it is fair to say that all are committed to fairness, accuracy and balance in the news columns. No ombudsman I know about attempts to deal with arguments over editor page opinion.