It used to be that the disgruntled newspaper reader's best avenue for complaining about a newspaper article, a writer, or the newspaper itself was to write a letter to the editor.

Times have changed.

Today, motivated individuals who disapprove of a newspaper's tone, bias, politics, or continual perceived "screw-ups" can cheaply set up a website and take regular pot-shots at the paper, its staff, and executives. Yes, it's a trend.

Like many American trends, this one appears to have started on the coasts. The New York Times has a site aimed at its foibles, SmarterTimes.com. The site has been run (since 2000) by Ira Stoll, who recently was named a ranking news executive at the soon-to-debut New York Sun.

Out West, the San Francisco Chronicle endures slings and arrows from ChronWatch.com, which is produced by a retired business executive (and non-journalist) who dislikes the "left-wing" slant of the paper. ChronWatch's founder intends to take the concept of his site and spread it to critique newspapers in other U.S. cities.

These types of websites are a departure from the forms of newspaper criticism that have appeared before. Printed newspaper parodies ("Not The New York Times") are age-old. Then came the web with its cheap publishing costs and worldwide access, and website newspaper parodies (e.g., "SuckBee.com", which poked fun at the Sacramento Bee's site). Many alternative weekly newspapers in major cities have media-critic columnists who often take aim at the major local dailies.

SmarterTimes.com and ChronWatch.com take a different approach to media criticism (though to many journalists I surveyed for this article, the sites aren't "serious criticism" but rather "rantings" by individuals with a particular political bent). They are continually published, watching the target newspaper, commenting on mistakes, and analyzing coverage for bias and slant. They're typically written by an individual with an axe to grind, sometimes joined by a few like-minded volunteers. And they try to build a community of the target newspaper's readers who feel the same way as they do.

Taking on a media institution

ChronWatch is the work of Jim Sparkman, a 71-year-old retired executive of Kaiser Aluminum who lives in the Bay Area and has been reading the San Francisco Chronicle for 25 years. "It has become an important tradition in my life," he says.

He explains why he founded ChronWatch: "I have conservative opinions on most issues, but I am not 'ultra' in any of those views. I strongly believe in free expression and exchanges of thought and ideas. ... The Chron has always 'tilted left' in its views, but not obnoxiously so until recently. ... Recently, the Chron has become smothered with a strong liberal bias.

"I found this openly biased presentation frustrating to the point that it ruined the taste of my morning cup of coffee. ... I took all the usual remedies of writing to the journalists and the editors, but eventually realized that was having no impact. Rather than simply canceling my subscription, I decided to fight back by forming my own website to critique the Chron."

The site debuted on Nov. 1, 2001, and to date has only modest visibility. Sparkman reports that the site gets on average a few hundred page views a day. Sparkman also has the help of a three-member editorial board: a journalist in Washington, D.C. (with Bay Area ties); a guest columnist who lives in London (ditto); and Sparkman's son, a Silicon Valley executive, who handles sales and marketing for the site. ChronWatch was recently redesigned to make it look more professional.

You'll seldom read anything positive in ChronWatch. The lead item for March 7 is typical: "They miss out on the big Bay Area stories. That's the Chron for you. First, they miss out on the big stories in the Bay Area, and we have to read out-of-town papers to get the scoop: 1) F.A.A. sting uncovers major security problems at SFO, covered by World Net Daily. 2) Freedom of the press gets trampled at Cal, by several outside papers. 3) Enron got critical help from the Clinton White House during the California power crisis, from the Washington Times. ..."

Such criticism does, of course, represent the thought of some of the newspaper's readers -- and if the Chronicle's editors took the time to read the site, they might pick up some information that's useful.

But it's easy to dismiss ChronWatch as right-wing ranting. That's what many Chronicle staffers appear to do. Of several I surveyed, said one: "(ChronWatch) is not taken seriously, because it's not really serious journalistic criticism. It's all coming from the right, latching onto the old boogeyman of the liberal media -- it's more knee-jerk reactionary criticism than a reasoned parsing of what's written and why. For the most part no one pays much attention."

Nit-picking the Times

Slightly more balanced criticism comes from SmarterTimes.com. Site editor Ira Stoll, 29, goes through the pages of The New York Times each day, and sends out an e-mail missive to a readership of 5,500 and a Web audience of more than 1,000 visitors. Where Sparkman and his crew focus on "liberal bias," Stoll gets down to the nitty-gritty by looking for typos and errors of fact. He picks apart each issue looking for problems with accuracy and objectivity.

Unlike Sparkman, Stoll usually steers his critiques clear of political intent. An item last week, for instance, picked on a sub-headline on the lead, front-page story, and was an objective criticism: "'The War's Biggest Clash.' If it's the war's biggest clash, how come it rates only a one-column headline instead of the banner treatment that the war's less-than-biggest clashes got?," the item read. "And wouldn't the enemy attack on Sept. 11, 2001, qualify as the war's biggest clash?"

Still, like Sparkman, Stoll does regularly harp on the Times' "liberal bias," which gives Times editors reason to dismiss or ignore the site's criticisms. Online Journalism Review columnist Gary Baum, who recently profiled SmarterTimes.com, quotes Times executives as refusing to comment on Stoll's work because he is currently part of a Manhattan newspaper (the New York Sun), set to launch soon. The Sun will have a "neo-conservative" tone meant to counter the Times' alleged leftward leaning.

If it's objectivity you want ...

Both SmarterTimes and ChronWatch are written by editors who portray themselves as "everyman" readers of their respective newspapers. That is the case with ChronWatch's Sparkman, the retired business executive; that description does not appear to fit SmarterTimes' Stoll, who describes himself as "an ordinary semi-intelligent guy in Brooklyn who reads the newspaper carefully early each morning." (Stoll is a Harvard graduate and was president of the Harvard Crimson newspaper.)

Local-media watchers might find comfort in the more objective media watchdogs, such as Grade the News, a website maintained by public television station KTEH and affiliated with Stanford University's graduate program in journalism. Grade the News features journalism criticism about various Bay Area media (not just newspapers) written by a long list of journalism notables -- including Ben Bagdikian, former dean of the graduate school of journalism at University of California at Berkeley, and Hodding Carter III, former State Dept. spokesman under President Jimmy Carter. Unfortunately, Grade the News is not as frequently updated as SmarterTimes and ChronWatch.