Wow, The Washington Post‘s Andrew Alexander certainly has been keeping himself busy. Just yesterday the ombudsman had to untangle the complicated web of conflicting Rahm Emanuel stories in the same paper. Today he’s getting emails and calls from irate readers that thought the accompanying picture from a story about same-sex marriage licenses were the “kind of stuff makes normal people want to throw up.”

The reason conflicts of interest are disclosed isn’t to give carte blanche for writing about things in which you have a vested economic interest – it’s to assure that, in the event a conflict is inescapable and may color a reader’s view of the piece, it isn’t ignored. Check Washington Post op-ed bylines carefully — authors may be closer to their subjects than they appear.

Former Washington Post ombudsman and seminal journalist Deborah Howell was killed after being struck by a car in New Zealand, according to a report in the Minneapolis-St.Paul Star Tribune. She was 68.