For a reporter seeking information about someone who died, the lack of an obituary, or even a death notice, should be a red flag.
But sometimes (clearly a small percentage of deaths) the red flag doesn’t mean the person wasn’t real; it’s an indication of how the newspaper business has changed.
This blog post isn’t much at all about Manti Te’o, though it grew from the post I wrote yesterday about linking and its role in the journalists’ falling for the dead-girlfriend hoax. I said that journalists should provide relevant links in their stories, and the lack of an obituary to link to should have alerted reporters parroting the story of Lennay Kekua’s death that more research was needed.
“Who dies without an obituary?” I asked.
That started another discussion and another blog post, about newspapers’ obituary policies. Accuracy and obituaries are two topics I address frequently here (each is its own category on my blog and has been for at least a couple of years), and they come together here.
I hope someone has done or will do a scientific study of how many deaths are noted with a published death notice and how many get a full obituary. If you know of such a study (now or in the future) please tell me about it in the comments here or by email: stephenbuttry (at) gmail (dot) com. I’ll do a separate post about that if I learn of such a study.
I don’t present this post as any sort of scientific result at all, but a compilation of lots of anecdotal information. The anecdotal evidence will come from two sources: responses to my questions asked in this blog and social media and some analysis of Legacy.com’s penetration.
Response to my questions
Online polls aren’t scientific at all. For instance, my poll in yesterday’s blog post drew responses exclusively, I’m sure, from journalists, but not even from a representative cross-section of journalists. An even if it were a cross-section, I got only 25 results, not enough to be viewed as a valid poll (I’m reposting it here, so you may see more results).
So I present these results only as more anecdotal information, but here’s what the people responding to my poll said:
- Eleven people (44 percent) said death notices (a line or two giving basic information such as name, age, hometown and date of death) are free in their local paper, but obituaries cost.
- Nine people (36 percent) said their local papers charge for both death notices and obituaries.
- Four people (16 percent) said their papers charge for death notices but publish obituaries at no charge.
- Only one person (4 percent) said the local paper doesn’t charge for either death notices or obituaries.
I also got more responses (the tweets are embedded at the end of this post) on Twitter, Facebook, comments on both stories and by email. I don’t know how many people took the poll as well as responding in one of those ways.
- Ten people said death notices are free at their newspapers but people must pay to post obits.
- One person told about four newspapers where people have to pay for both death notices and obituaries. Another provided a link to a newspaper that charges for both.
- One person said her newspaper charges for death notices but does a handful of fully reported obituaries each day as news stories. (Update: That link works for me, but a reader emailed that it didn’t work for him. It’s a Facebook comment from Teresa Hanafin, director of engagement and social media at Boston.com. Maybe her settings don’t allow people who aren’t her friends to see the comment.)
- All of the newspapers people identified in comments were in the United States (obviously I don’t know about people responding to the poll), except for a commenter from Belgium, whose newspaper charges for both death notices and obituaries.
Of course, in the places where death notices are free, some people may not know that and may not publish notices when loved ones die because they have heard that obituaries are expensive. My anecdotal evidence, though, does support my view that in many communities, death notices are free. (It also supports those who pointed out that some people will die without obituaries.)
Funerals are expensive and most people have funerals when they die, and funeral homes pass on the costs of obituaries and death notices to families when newspapers charge to publish that content.
Legacy.com
In a comment yesterday, Owen Youngman, Knight Professor of Digital Media Strategy at the Medill School of Journalism, said Legacy affiliates ”publish death notices and/or obituaries for 75% of all those who die in the U.S. each year.” Owen used to be on the Legacy board of directors. Legacy’s about page cites that number and some others I will use below.
Legacy says it represents 85 of the 100 largest newspapers in the United States (measuring, I presume, by print circulation) and 800 newspapers in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. That’s not nearly all newspapers. The National Newspaper Association says it has 2,200 member newspapers in the United States.
Just looking at Iowa, a state where I’ve spent more time than anywhere else in my career, Legacy represents the biggest newspaper, the Des Moines Register. Legacy lists 14 Iowa affiliates. The Iowa Newspaper Association represents 300 Iowa newspapers. And it’s not just the small weeklies (the ones most likely not to charge for obits) that aren’t in Legacy. Beyond the Register, I think the biggest Iowa newspapers are probably the Cedar Rapids Gazette, Quad-City Times, Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier and Dubuque Telegraph-Herald. None of them are listed as Legacy affiliates. I think only three of the state’s 10 biggest newspapers are on Legacy.
The point is, there are a lot of newspapers — and not just tiny weeklies — that aren’t on Legacy. So if Legacy’s claim of covering 75 percent of all deaths is true, I think it’s likely that the number of deaths reported in newspapers is at least 90 percent and probably more than 95 percent.
Still, as one who has spent his career in newspapers, I find it disturbing if that percentage is less than 99. Nearly everyone’s death is huge news in at least a tiny circle of people. I doubt that death notices are a significant revenue stream for any newspaper. I believe the approach for obituaries that I proposed in 2010, with death notices free but with an option for families to commission professionally written life stories, would do a better job of producing revenue for newspapers and of reporting the news of people’s deaths.
Beyond obituaries
Shifting back to the topic of verifying people’s deaths: Clearly, the lack of an obituary is a rare occurrence when someone dies. But obits aren’t the only way to confirm a death. If you can’t find someone’s obituary in a Google search or a search of the local newspaper’s site or Legacy’s obituaries, you can also search the Social Security Death Index. Unless the person who died was a child (and even children today should have Social Security numbers) or died before 1937, you should be able to document someone’s death there. And failure to do so should raise not just a red flag, but a huge stop sign.
Update: Check the discussion in comments of the Social Security Death Index.
And if you know where a person died, you should be able to confirm a death by finding a death certificate, as Adriana M. Chávez of the El Paso Times noted on Twitter:
@stevebuttry Our county’s website offers a death certificate search. Easy to look up a name and get a date of death.
— Adriana M. Chávez (@AChavezEPTimes) January 17, 2013
@eclisham @stevebuttry To view it, go to the public records tab of epcounty.com.
— Adriana M. Chávez (@AChavezEPTimes) January 17, 2013
@eclisham @stevebuttry The search will give you the name, DOD and record # to request a hard copy from the county clerk.
— Adriana M. Chávez (@AChavezEPTimes) January 17, 2013
@stevebuttry @eclisham For me, confirming name and date of death online is enough to guide me to getting further confirmation.
— Adriana M. Chávez (@AChavezEPTimes) January 17, 2013
@eclisham @stevebuttry Yes.
— Adriana M. Chávez (@AChavezEPTimes) January 17, 2013
Setting aside the question of whether newspapers should re-examine their approach to obituaries, there simply is no excuse for journalists not to verify reported deaths in their stories. Most times you can verify quickly. Many times you can find important details for your story (or correct innocent mistakes that resulted from sources’ flawed memories). And, if someone is lying or mistaken about the central fact that a person died or even existed, you can prevent a huge error. I don’t care how busy you are. If a person you are reporting about is supposed to be dead, you must verify the death. It would be a rare death you couldn’t verify one of these ways:
- Search for the obituary on Google, Legacy or the local newspaper’s website or on the sites of local funeral homes.
- Search for the person in the Social Security Death Index.
- Search the local county’s death certificates.
If you don’t find confirmation of the death one of those places, it would be journalistic malpractice to publish that they person died unless you found reliable confirmation elsewhere (including an explanation of why the person didn’t show up in those places.
Twitter responses
@stevebuttry still free here on Treasure Coast. @tcpalm
— LaurenceReisman (@LaurenceReisman) January 18, 2013
@stevebuttry funeral home online obitsseem to be replacing MSM obits. See legacy.com. Deaths also now are often on Facebook.
— David Simpson (@adviserdavid) January 17, 2013
@stevebuttry In case no has already told you, @mercuryx does charge (extra for photos), but also runs free 3-or-4-line obits.
— Evan Brandt (@PottstownNews) January 17, 2013
Rick Mills, editor of the Morning Sun in Mt. Pleasant, Mich., sends this by email:
Here, obits are expensive and paid. We still run free death notices: name, age, city of residence and date of death.
Update: Rick added some more by email:
We also publish “death notices” as recorded in Michigan by county clerks. They come in a couple of weeks later, and are just simple name, city, age and date of death. But they are a sure-fire way to make sure you don’t miss your newspaper-of-record duty even if family declines death notice or obit.
I don’t know how widespread that practice is, but that gives a third layer of likelihood that a death will be reported in this local newspaper.
@stevebuttry Chattanooga Times Free Press gives 1st 50 words free; charges per word after that.
— Angela Tant (@amtant1972) January 17, 2013
@stevebuttry I suspect days of everyone having a media-published obit/death notice are gone. Even some rural weeklies charge now. But ….
— Gerri Berendzen (@gerrrib) January 17, 2013
@stevebuttry Most funeral homes, however, post obits on their websites. So it would just take more work to track a person’s obit down.
— Gerri Berendzen (@gerrrib) January 17, 2013
@stevebuttry Charge for obits, have free death notices at @whignews. They’re all submitted, so doesn’t guarantee all deaths are published.
— Gerri Berendzen (@gerrrib) January 17, 2013
@stevebuttry We went to paid format, hybrid of old paid death notice and news obit more than a year ago.
— Philip Heron (@PhilHeron) January 17, 2013
@stevebuttry There is a nominal brief that is available that is a sentence or two. Everythign else is paid by the line.
— Philip Heron (@PhilHeron) January 17, 2013
@stevebuttry We (small weekly) charge $35 to 10 inches, up rapidly for more to avoid novels. Death notice (70 words) free.
— Francis Materi (@fran_the_man) January 17, 2013
@stevebuttry The Del Norte Triplicate charges for their obits. Not for death notices, though.
— Jessica Cejnar (@JessCejnar) January 17, 2013
@stevebuttry At the @paradisepost obits are paid. Death Notices are free. And online.
— Rick Silva (@Post_RickSilva) January 17, 2013
@stevebuttry Paid obits @lansreporter for sometime now.
— Aixa Torregrosa (@AixaTorregrosa) January 17, 2013
Free. RT @stevebuttry: @aixatorregrosa @lansreporter Thanks, Aixa. How about death notices?
— Aixa Torregrosa (@AixaTorregrosa) January 17, 2013
Filed under: Accuracy, Obituaries
