Context is key. In NZ many newspapers will carry “Death Notices” in the “Family Notices” section of the paper. It will be a short (30 words) notice with name, age and “much missed” or “survived by” or similar.
An obituary will normally only appear for someone (locally) famous, and will be written by an employee of the paper.
Well, that’s how I understand it in our local paper. It’s a metropolitan daily serving approx 250.000 population, so not big but not a local freeby either.
However I just checked the website of the major NZ daily, the NZ Herald, and they are muddying the waters considerably. Their death notices appear in a section called Obituaries, and are called obituaries on the page. Just to confuse me, they have two columns; one is headed Obituaries and has the first 3 lines of the notice, and the other is Death Notices and just has the name of the dead person, as a link to the notice.
A few comments as someone who recently used the obits to prove a deception (Death was real, but date and people were changed by person doing deceiving):
I was never aware of the distinction (apparently by people that write obituaries) between death notices and obituaries. I have always called both obituaries.
It is QUITE obvious which ones are professionally done - and which ones are not - there is no issues of journalistic integrity here (at least the ones I have seen).
As mentioned above - I recently used this (along with other data this led me to) to prove a deception. I must have told 20 people the story - it was obvious I was talking about a death notice (as the person in question did nothing of note) - no one was confused or corrected me. These are (well at least most of them) - fairly smart people including lawyers, doctors, and scientists. And they aren’t the type of people who would be shy about correcting me either. I am pretty sure - where I live (Balto/DC) that people would use these interchangeably.
While everyone doesn’t have family that pays for a death notice - and I am not 100% sure how common it is post facebook/internet - I don’t think the author mentioned by OP is necessarily wrong here. If I knew the background of the person - for example I knew the person was supposed to have family in the area - and they were middle class (or even just not dirt poor) - it would have been pretty unheard of where I live to not have had a death notice in the paper.
There are old people that read this section every day to see who they know has died they might know(this is usually mentioned half jokingly, but I am pretty sure my dad reads it every day [or however often it is published]).
Of course - in areas like NYC - although it is bigger - there is probably a much higher percentage of people without family in the area - and that might change the whole dynamic.
But personally - I think if you knew enough about the background of the person - and the town/newspaper - there are cases where you you say it would be almost certain (above 95%) that dead=death notice.
To the best of my knowledge/memory - no one that I know that has died (that I cared enough to check) - didn’t have a death notice somewhere. That’s how you double check what time the funeral/viewing is so you don’t have to bother the family
In real life - you can check the Social Security Death Index (of course the person has to have a SSN - which is pretty likely if they are in the US). That doesn’t sound as “romantic” as checking the obits though (and there is a larger time lag on the SSDI).
This is not 100% true. For Social Security to care some one would have to report to them that you’ve died and that you’ve either received social security or your children/spouse would have to be eligible to receive money. So if you’re 20 years old with no kids then they’re not going to care and may or may not list you in the database.
Good point. I assumed something like that had to happen, but I have had people unmarried with no kids show up. I just assumed they were getting data from coroners or something.
Seems to suggest 40% of 0-24 year olds (while about 95% of the above 65). Are included. This seems to support what you state, but the 40% figure is higher than what I would guess if limited to only those married with children.
The Canadian perspective: The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail distinguish between “obituaries” and “death notices”. Meanwhile, Postmedia outlets such as The National Post, The Montreal Gazette or The Vancouver Sun simply call both things obituaries. (All of these newspapers are, of course, well-regarded major urban broadsheets.)
The Star and Globe notwithstanding, in common parlance, I have never heard anyone refer to death notices as anything other than “obituaries” – nor would I expect to. “Death notice” sounds horribly clinical and emotionless; “obituary” at least gives a measure of dignity to the proceedings.
Which means you can whinge all you like about the useful distinction the newsroom draws between a death notice and an obituary: the public ain’t gonna stand for it. They’re not forking over their cash for a simple emotion-free death notice, and they’re not reading a “death notice column” either. Quite simply, the public pays for and reads obituaries, no matter what anyone in a newsroom calls 'em.
NOT having one is not conclusive evidence that the death was faked. It’s a choice of the family/survivors/responsible parties whether to publish an obituary in the newspaper, and an obituary in my town is priced by the line–so a long one can be hundreds of dollars. At one time here there were death notices published in the newspaper by whatever governing body notes such things (city or county?). THAT would have been a definitive place to determine whether someone died. At some point it was deemed (by those who deem such things) that publishing death notices was an invasion of privacy. Presumably such notices are kept somewhere at city hall or the county courthouse, and the person in the story could have researched that. But the lack of an obituary alone? No–not everyone who dies has one.
As someone who works at a newspaper (and not a rag, glorified newsletter or eight-page freebie), I can say that, in the newsroom, we do know the difference between the obituaries that come from the news desk and the obituaries that come from advertising downstairs. We call both of them obituaries. I spent four years in journalism school, and graduated with honors, and I never heard anyone rant about the difference between obituaries and death notices. If you referred to a “death notice,” I would know what you meant, but it certainly wouldn’t get my dander up to refer to 300 words of paid-for hagiography as an obituary.
Whoa, partner! Forgive me if I used incorrect terminology.
Years ago, in our local newspaper (city with pop. 1 million), in the obituary section, you would find obituaries, some of which I guess came from the funeral home and were composed by the family (which is how I handled my late husband’s obituary), and elsewhere in that section, there was simply a list of people who had died and whose deaths had been recorded by the city/county (not sure which) within a specified period of time. Only the name was listed, no age, no cause of death, nothing else. I’m referring to this list as “death notices.”
You could also find a list of divorces filed, marriage licenses applied for, and births. It was pretty danged interesting.
At your newspaper, okay, you call both of these things “death notices,” but I’m making a distinction between a paragraph giving some information about the deceased (including date of birth, survivors, notable life events, funeral info) AND a simple list supplied by the city/county containing only the NAMES of recently deceased persons.
The newspaper discontinued the death notice (and divorce, marriage license, and birth) practice probably about 20 years ago, maybe longer, due to privacy concerns. If you’ve been in the newspaper business less than ~25 years, you may not remember this practice. And I’m not sure ALL newspapers did it.
No worries. I can see where you would be taken aback if you thought I was replying to you.
We actually do make a small distinction between obituaries and what we call “other deaths,” which is an occasionally run list of names of recently deceased people. I don’t think we run divorce notices, but we still have a healthy supply of city, county and state legal notices.
Why on earth would you use the same term to refer to a staff-written article representing your newpaper’s reputation for accuracy AND to a paid advert, written by God-knows-who containing dubious information (“rests in Jesus’s arms”) for which your newspaper is in no way responsible? Is the distinction somehow unimportant to you? “Hey, I just got an obit here. Let’s see if we can run it in the late edition,” and it makes no difference at where you run it, side-by-side with staff-generated copy or paid ads?
It’s pretty patently obvious, when you look at our paper, which are the paid obituaries and which are the news obituaries. The news obits are with the other news stories, in our body copy and with our headline style. The paid obits are in tiny sans-serif agate and are marked off in their own spot on the page.
Honestly, you can act like calling both of them obituaries is tantamount to letting the advertising department decide our A1 budget, but I don’t think anyone who actually works at a newspaper right now sees it that way. We have bigger concerns, like who’s getting laid off next month and how much of their work we’ll have to do.
Same reason we use the term “painting” to any old random Joe’s poor attempt to apply oil on canvas as well as the Renoir masterpiece hanging in the museum downtown?
