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
We run fairly complete free obituaries of area and former area residents. We include basic biographical information, plus hobbies, etc. We include direct survivors, but not grandchildren, etc. For that, families must purchase a paid notice. One of the reasons we insist information come from a funeral home, beyond confirmation of death, is to settle intra-family disputes from estranged members. Doesn’t happen often, but it serves as a good referee.
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Each time that happens, I think that family dispute would make a good story.
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You’d be surprised how many times we get competing obits because of some family dispute over who is named as a survivor. There may not be a story there every time, but there is a story about how mixed and estranged family handle deaths and the issues that arise.
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Recently, a court case was abated by the death of the defendant, who had been charged, i believe, with fraud. The reporter had at hand a paid death notice (or obit; it was detailed) that listed a crematorium. I wanted more. The crematorium confirmed that a body was cremated at a service for the defendant. I asked the reporter to check the vital records department. A doc had signed a death certificate, but no cause of death. The defendant’s lawyer said he had been hospitalized with a severe, i believe, diabetic condition. The defendant’s daughter said the same thing. And the prosecutor moved to dismiss the case. We wrote the story.
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I like an editor who wants more.
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[…] Journalists should verify deaths even when there is no obit (but there’s usually an obit) More from Steve Buttry on the journalists’ need to verify deaths. And, as he points out, there is usually an obit out there somewhere. (HT Carrie Brown-Smith at Univ. of Memphis) […]
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Interesting — but the Social Security death database is of limited use for recent deaths. The NYT reports that it is both incomplete and typically 14-18 months out of date. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/09/us/social-security-death-record-limits-hinder-researchers.html?_r=0
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If you are creating a bogus life story that involves a dead girlfriend, I recommend writing a fake death notice or obit. I guarantee that your local newspaper’s classified advertising department will NOT fact-check 🙂
Surely only *official* records or spokespersons can be relied upon to verify someone’s demise.
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CORRECTION: The NYT story said a separate CDC database is 14-18 months out of date. It said the SS database was increasingly incomplete.
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Thanks for passing this along, Todd. But I just checked and a November death was in there. I don’t know whether they have improved it since the Times story or whether the story might have overstated the problem. It’s still a good idea to check, because inclusion would be a strong confirmation. But not finding a death listed there wouldn’t be conclusive, given the possibility of the index being out of date.
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[…] I have nothing to add to the furor over this whole “Manti Te’o’s Dead Girlfriend Is A Hoax” thing, except this: we journalists have a lot to worry about and we have tools which with they can fight to preserve our credibility. […]
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[…] 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. […]
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[…] already blogged twice about why reporters telling the story originally should have sought an obituary or death notice […]
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I came here out of a sort of desperation. Someone I dearly love, but was cut off from, I have been told, suddenly died. She passed away at the end of July. I cannot find one thing about her. I know she would have been buried at the VA Cemetery in Vermont because she had her folks buried there. I went to their site and her mom and dad were listed with their grave sites, but not hers.
Here it is almost two months later and nothing. How long does it take before something should appear on the net?
Her name is Melodee R. Williamson (just in case you are more clever than I). She was born July 22, 1961.
Thank you so much for anything you can do on this matter.
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I couldn’t find her on a quick search. I would try calling a local newspaper or funeral home in the community where she died (if you know that).
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Will it eventually reach the net? She was a veteran and someplaces need a death certificate to bury, collect insurance etc.
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[…] Nearly everyone gets an obituary; if not, journalists can and should still verify deaths (2013, 4K views in 2014) […]
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The problem isn’t the information in obituaries. The problem is that the Mormon Church’s many organizations (some even now publicly traded) have tied up all the formerly free obituaries and they make you pay (through the nose) for the simplest date-of-death information. It is virtually impossible to get death information because the newspapers have been only too glad to sell them off, exclusively, to the Mormon Church organizations thus violating the long time assumption that a person only had to get on a newspaper’s website to find all the past obituaries they carried. No longer. You will pay the Mormon Church (Ancestry.com etc.) or you simply will not be able to get the information, unless you want to drive to cemetery after cemetery in order to complete your biography.
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So I wrote you a little under a year ago. It was about Melodee Rebecca Williamson b. July 27, 1961 who allegedly died the end of July last year.
I wrote the VA and did not hear from them, so I wrote about this on Salon. Suddenly I got an email from her nephew who always hated me. It was full of well wishes and regrets. He told a story of how awful her death was and how her sister did not care etc. I told him I wanted to get her an obituary. He said he was going to go to White River Junction Vermont VA to get her death certificate so we could do so. I haven’t heard from him for a while though we talked back and forth for a few months.
During that time I got what looked like an official email from the VA that she had died.
Now here it is, we are coming on the date of her death and still nothing.
She had quite a few friends, but on her facebook page it says nothing of her death,, no well wishers, no prayers, which is unlike the caliber of people she knew.
I felt everything was settled, but now I don’t think so.
If there is still nothing anywhere, than what is up. They said she was buried, her ashes rather, were buried at the VA cemetery in Vermont.
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Thanks for the update. I’m sorry this situation has been so frustrating for you.
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My local paper, the St. Joseph News-Press, offers a free obituary for the first 70 words and a per word fee beyond that.
I landed on this page, because I wanted to learn more about how obituaries are published and whether some families decide not to publish one.
I can’t find an obituary or death notice for an old friend who died last week in Jacksonville. I’ve scoured Florida newspapers and funeral homes online. I guess she’s one of the few who has no obituary even though she had friends and family who loved her dearly. Perhaps the family wants her death to be private.
Her death was briefly mentioned on her Facebook wall the day she died and people offered condolences, and then nothing more was said or posted.
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Thank you for your thoughtful post on obituaries.
I have recently been thinking about writing a post about obituaries. Our local newspapers receive their obituary information from the funeral directors.The cost is added right on to the funeral expense. Most are cremations today, the obit cost is probably paid to the newspaper by the family.
My idea about obituaries, is thought that they may very well become a thing of the past. Modern families do not keep track of one generation let alone two generations, that is the information a lot of obituaries include. The day will be coming when a family member dies, nobody will have the information available because they never were told about the other people in their family, in many cases not even a grandparent.
As our hurry up society continues to go faster and faster, obituaries probably all come from a social media site like Facebook. There is a very real chance Homeland Security could do the job right now. All the funeral director will have to do, or the obituary editor at the local newspaper online contact Facebook, or the Government. Download whatever information they need and print it. This might be a solution for the disappearing family tree, from the roots on up to the top branches.
https://lghoelson.wordpress.com/
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I am confused. Let’s say, I dissappear and later(months, years) i am found to be deasced. And a note in the area were to ask for the respect of not memotioning that so and so was found dead. Nor would that person like any obit anywhere. Just to keep it a very private family matter. Is this even possiable?
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A friend of mine passed away sunday i was the one that found him unfortunately ive been looking in tge obituaries to see if he was in there but nothing yet which is weird cause in lowell,MA i dont believe they charge for it . is it possible that the family refused a obituary and can they do that?
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Yes, a family can decide not to pay for an obituary.
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