Newspapers sometimes draw broad conclusions from relatively insignificant statistics. Just for fun, using their own numbers, I'm going to do the same thing for the Globe. Here's my headline:

Boston Globe local reporting more error prone than in the past.

237 errors in the City / Region section last year vs 234 the year before. Actually, 237 does seems like a lot of errors. In context though, it might not be. And really, the increase is negligible.

Ombudsman Chacón tells us that one reporter was responsible for 10 errors, one columnist had 5. Who were they?

...In my column, I mention that one reporter logged 10 errors. I didn't name the reporter because he no longer works at the Globe and I didn't have a chance to get a formal comment from him. I also didn't name the columnist with the most errors because it seemed unfair to single him out without naming the reporter...

Commendable, but not very enlightening for the reader.

One more complaint. The op-ed referred to the ombudsman's blog but didn't provide a link (or even a URL) and it wasn't all that easy to find. Once I did, I found that the entry referenced the op-ed but also didn't provide a link.

UPDATE: Just one more nitpicking observation. In his blog post Chacón writes:

...As I noted in the column, there is no clear explanation why the total number of errors has declined since 2004. It may be that Globe journalists are being more careful and accurate...

If so, they're only being 0.01% more careful and accurate. That's because there was a total relative decrease in errors, 2004 to 2005, of zero point zero one percent -not exactly something to brag about.

(As I do the math, In 2004 there were 1031 errors in 59,144 stories. In 2005 1018 errors in 57,893 stories. Both represent an error rate of about 1.7%, or more precisely, 1.75% vs 1.74%. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.))