The Solomon Scandals A Washington newspaper novel by David Rothman

Daniel Schorr’s death: Why a mystery? Wouldn’t he have wanted obituaries to report the exact cause?

Daniel Schorr’s acu­ity seemed to grow with age, per­haps because he had that much extra his­tory stored in his brain to com­pare with the news of the day. Sym­pa­thy to his fam­ily and friends. The photo is of Mr. Schorr with Scott Simon, his col­league at National Pub­lic Radio.

Now a ques­tion for the media. Few reporters were more ded­i­cated to the full story than Mr. Schorr was. Didn’t that trait help earn him the honor of a place on Nixon’s ene­mies list? Wouldn’t it serve the Schorr mem­ory, then, for the press to report the cause of death at age 93 beyond the words “short ill­ness”? I did not see the full facts in obits in the Wash­ing­ton Post and in the New York Times or on the Web site of National Pub­lic Radio. Is there a rea­son for the omis­sion, beyond the family’s appar­ent pref­er­ence not to pro­vide the information?

In the past at least—I don’t know about now—Washington Post may not even have pub­lished a news obit if the sub­ject was obscure and the obit writer did not know why the sub­ject died. The Post even tried to print the cause of death of peo­ple with AIDS. An obit­u­ary of J.Y. Smith, head of the Post obit desk, said: “He sug­gested that those wish­ing to con­ceal infor­ma­tion or have entire con­trol over con­tent could buy a paid death notice.” The “spe­cific med­ical cause of death” is at least among the rec­om­mended items listed in 2007 for fam­i­lies to include in obit­u­ary sub­mis­sions; also see a cur­rent form, partly repro­duced here. Has Post pol­icy changed since J.Y. Smith’s retire­ment from obits?

So what’s the impor­tance of print­ing the cause? Well, beyond the prob­a­bil­ity that Mr. Schorr would have wanted the full story reported, sup­pose he died of a little-known dis­ease that could ben­e­fit from more pub­lic­ity for more money for more  research. And if the cause hap­pened to be some­thing com­mon like prostate can­cer (prob­a­bly not the cause of the Schorr death if we go by “short ill­ness,” the Times’ phrase), then report­ing it would also have served soci­ety. We’ve long got­ten past the point where “prostate” is among the unmentionables.

Read­ers, what do you think? No, I won’t ask for a death cer­tifi­cate or dis­turb the family—worthy of com­pas­sion no mat­ter how they feel about the report­ing of the cause. I am just curi­ous why we’re left with­out an almost cer­tainly inno­cent fact that I sus­pect Mr. Schorr him­self would have very much wanted revealed. He was a wit­ness to and stu­dent of his­tory, after all, not just a reporter. Did the Post gen­tly try such an argu­ment on the Schorr family?

It can be strange, what goes into an obit­u­ary and what doesn’t—an issue that arises in The Solomon Scan­dals—or even whether there is an obit­u­ary, period. My late father wanted one in the Post or at least didn’t object. My privacy-obsessed mother—in this respect the inspi­ra­tion for the like-minded Margo char­ac­ter in Scan­dals—asked us not to sub­mit an obit to the Post. She declined despite her com­mu­nity activ­i­ties and her brief career with a busi­ness newslet­ter; so I remem­bered her on the Web instead, with the approval of my sister.

Pon­der­ing these mat­ters, I also think of my friend the late Her­man Holtz, a for­mer news­pa­per reporter from Philadel­phia who ended up in the D.C. area and wrote more than 70 books on busi­ness. I tipped off the Post, where the obit desk couldn’t have been nicer. Then, in a curi­ous twist, I learned that Herm’s obit would not make the paper after all because his fam­ily didn’t want it in. Why? A news­pa­perman pens dozens of books, includ­ing at least one best-seller, and then just van­ishes into the mist? I won’t even bother to spec­u­late here; the ways of both fam­i­lies and news­pa­pers can be mysterious.

That said, I’ll email the Post to see if it can enlighten us about its pre­cise poli­cies on “cause” (any fac­tor in whether an obit makes it, at least in the case of non­VIPs?) and about the han­dling of its oth­er­wise excel­lent Schorr obit. (Schorr photo credit.)

Update: Adam Bern­stein, obit­u­ar­ies edi­tor at the Post, sent a prompt and help­ful reply, which I’ll repro­duce ahead in its entirety. The gist is that the Post prefers to include the cause of death but does not require it, even in non­VIP obits. One rea­son appears to be time. The Post pub­lishes 4,000 local obits each year, accord­ing to him—more than another other daily paper. That, as I see it, is a major pos­i­tive, even out­weigh­ing the com­plete­ness fac­tor. Still, I myself would have appre­ci­ated the full story in the case of some­one as promi­nent as Daniel Schorr.

=== === ===

Thank you for writ­ing, Mr. Roth­man, whether it’s a com­pli­ment or not.

We print the cause of death when­ever we can get it. We feel it’s part of the news, whether a per­son died at 25 or 125.

That said, some­times there are news sto­ries we have to run regard­less of whether the fam­ily reveals the cause of death. Usu­ally this is the case when we solicit the story because of a person’s prominence.

Our pol­icy has very lit­tle impact on whether a “non-VIP,” as you call it, will rate an obit. My basis for say­ing this? Our small staff still writes about 4,000 local obits a year, a record unmatched by any news­pa­per in the world.

Sin­cerely,

Adam Bern­stein
Obit­u­ar­ies Edi­tor
The Wash­ing­ton Post

You might also like:

• A tale of two obituaries—plus wisdom from J.Y. Smith, first official editor of the W. Post obit desk
• When you die, how many people will sign your Legacy.com page? Six for Robert Smith, so far
• Robert H. Smith dead: Son of the builder who helped inspire the Solomon character
• Robert Smith’s death as the W. Post covered it: Nothing on Skyline or secret Ribicoff investment
• Solomon Scandals hyperlocal series so far: A list for latecomers