Sign up for the daily CJR newsletter.

Last Words

Mike Hoyt’s mother was fortunate to have a journalist son who could do justice to her life (“My Mother’s Obit,” CJR, May/June). Nowadays, with paid obituaries commonplace, the responsibility for composing obits has shifted from newsrooms to ad departments and funeral homes or to family members who may be emotionally spent or simply incoherent. Our local daily, which prints the first ten obit lines free and charges $4 a line thereafter plus $12 for a half-column black-and-white cut ($16 for color), recently ran an obit that instructed readers where to send their “detonations.” Another obit writer thought to celebrate the departed’s life by advertising how he “loved vacuuming.” Then there was this item, just the way it ran:

We are told that time makes it easier but we found that isn’t true for the five years you have been gone dear is still filled with missing you the nights are still just as lonely as when you first went away you’r not with us for our tomorrows but with us from our yesterdays. Still missing you with all our hearts.

A well-lived life is entitled to a well-written and edited send-off. If newspapers insist on charging for obits, they should at least spare the bereaved embarrassment for their money.

Gil Cranberg
Herb Strentz
Des Moines, Iowa

“My Mother’s Obit” struck a chord. My mother died nearly ten years ago in the era before paid obituaries.

Since I wrote the obit, I figured it would run the way I wrote it. After all, I am a veteran journalist who learned the fine art of writing obits as a summer intern at The Asbury Park Press back in the dark ages of the late 1960s. I continued churning them out, no matter where I worked or what newsroom position I held.

The funeral director promised to fax my mom’s obit to four newspapers, but he warned me that they were under no obligation to print what I wanted.

He was right. The Trentonian got it right, but the three other newspapers felt a need to rewrite my precious prose, introducing errors into the copy. The (Newark) Star-Ledger, for example, got her age wrong; The Jewish News of New Jersey grossly misspelled the name of a survivor; and The Trenton Times managed to transpose my mom’s middle name and first name. Fortunately, the three newspapers willingly published corrected obits after I called to complain.

Yes, Mr. Hoyt, paying $404 for your mom’s obit in The Kansas City Star seems wrong — actually, downright disgraceful. But in retrospect, maybe paid obits are the only way family members get to see their loved ones’ names in the paper for the last time the way they want them.

A couple of local newspapers I read regularly publish paid obits, obviously without editing. Some of the things that get into these obits are awful — style inconsistencies, misspellings, and poor writing. But dare I say this? Maybe, just maybe, paid obits written to a family’s specifications are a true reader service.

David M. Levine
Hamilton Square, New Jersey

The Des Moines Register has one-upped Kansas City. It has charged for obits for some time now, but a few months ago it increased the type size of the obits — and nothing else in the newspaper — so there are fewer words per line, and, thus, more lines (they charge by the line) per obit.

And, of course, the obits now routinely leave out the one important piece of information other than the name: the cause of death. It used to be mandatory to include that, when the obits were free. But now it’s up to the “advertiser.” Alas.

Michael Gartner
(former editor of the Register)
Des Moines, Iowa

Fine piece on paid obituaries, and I agree with every word. Apart from what they say about newspapers and their relationship to the deceased and their families, I would add that they also cause newspapers to miss out on providing some fine reading. This is the case whether the reader knew the person or not. I run a news service and can’t read every word on it, but I read a lot of the obituaries and appreciations. They are continually interesting.

Al Leeds
President and editorial director,
Los Angeles Times-Washington Post
News Service
Arlington, Virginia

Disputed Quote

Belatedly, I am writing to correct a piece of misinformation in Michael Shapiro’s March/April article about The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News. On page 33 of the story, in the second column, he quotes an unnamed source alleging that in 1987 — nineteen years ago — in a meeting with editors and managers, I said that I would like to see the newspaper “win a Pulitzer for cost-cutting.”

We have checked with Michael Shapiro. He says his source was in the room at the time. We also have talked with some former editors of the Inquirer, each one highly placed and in a solid position to know of such a statement had it ever been made. These editors deny ever hearing such a statement from me or even hearing someone else say that I made it.

The truth is I never said such a thing. It doesn’t even sound like something I would say.

So why write you now? In May, in a column in The New York Times by media commentator David Carr, the quote appeared again. When we asked, we learned that David had taken it from Michael Shapiro’s article. That is the problem with these things. They get “into the ether”; others pick them up, and what is false to begin with suddenly becomes accepted truth.

So with this letter, I would like to expunge it from the record once and for all. I never said such a thing. I never would.

Tony Ridder
Chairman and CEO, Knight Ridder
San Jose, California

The editors respond: We’re not expunging. Steve Lovelady, who was associate executive editor of the paper at the time and later its managing editor, is our eye and earwitness. (He is now the managing editor of CJR Daily, our sister Web site.) Lovelady was about three rows back from Ridder’s podium when Ridder made the remark, and he found it memorable. This was at a meet-the-new-boss meeting attended mostly by middle-management types from the business side. It is true that Gene Roberts and Jim Naughton, the top editors of the paper at the time, do not remember hearing such a formulation, though both say they later heard others speak about such a remark, “or something very much like it,” as Naughton put it. It is worth noting that Michael Shapiro twice asked for an interview with Ridder. He was ignored the first time and rebuffed the second.

Blurred Lines?

Daniel Schulman’s article, “Mind Games” (CJR, May/June) is concerned about government half-truths and distortions that misinform the public, but Schulman is guilty of the same. He gives readers the impression that the Pentagon’s Information Operations Roadmap blurs critical distinctions between public affairs, public diplomacy, and psychological operations. Exactly the opposite is true. The recommendations in the document, approved by the Secretary of Defense as guidance, establish clear boundaries for military psychological operations and distinguish them from public affairs and public diplomacy precisely in order to help prevent misinforming the American public. Since the declassified document is available on the Internet, your readers can verify these points for themselves (see pages 26-28).

The article also misrepresents me as an authority on an incident where a military spokesperson allegedly gave news media misleading information. I told Schulman I could not verify the press account of the event. When your fact-checker later asked me to verify the press account, I again said I could do no such thing. I just used the incident, as reported in the press, to illustrate the value of the Information Operations Roadmap guidance on boundaries for military psychological operations. When these boundary lines are violated bad things happen. My arguments about occasional missteps by psychological operations ran counter to the thesis of “Mind Games” that the government wants to mislead the public intentionally and systematically, so Schulman opted in favor of misleading his readers rather than accurately reporting my argument. Worse, CJR ignored the corrections I provided to your fact-checker.

“Mind Games” unfortunately adds to the growing body of evidence that the American public should be more worried about biased news media than about government misinformation. I commend to you the wonderful prayer that Schulman uses to close his article: “Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong and never to be content with a half-truth when the whole truth can be won.” Journalists as well as government officials and academics should say Amen to that.

Christopher J. Lamb
Senior research fellow
Institute for National Strategic Studies
Washington, D.C.

Daniel Schulman responds: The Information Operations Roadmap, a classified Pentagon directive that Lamb authored, calls for greater synergy between military public affairs, public diplomacy, and information operations, which includes such subspecialties as psychological operations. As I wrote, “The directive, while noting that the ‘lanes in the road’ must be clarified, was vague about what this coordination should look like in practice.” At the time the roadmap was being implemented, the effort was clearly focused on coordination, not on delineation. In Afghanistan and in Iraq the lines between waging information warfare and informing the public blurred in dangerous ways. It’s not that the roadmap didn’t call for clear boundaries, it’s that those recommendations were clearly not followed in a number of cases.

Lamb says that I misrepresented him as an authority on a widely reported incident in which the military appears to have targeted CNN with a psychological operation. I originally contacted Lamb, a former Pentagon official, because he is an authority on IO and for that reason placed a premium on his opinions. He held this episode up as an example of psyops run amok, and, while I never implied that he had special knowledge of this operation, I quoted him because his comments were significant, leaving no doubt about how he feels about this incident: “The purpose of this was actually a bit of deception. We wanted to see how the insurgents we were monitoring would react to this news — that was the purpose. That was a bad no-no. Public affairs guys must have credibility with the press and in my estimation ought not to be used for that purpose.” When our fact-checker contacted Lamb, he did indeed provide her with several “corrections,” though, after going through the source and interview material provided to her, she decided that there was nothing to correct.

Salute to Shooters

Thanks for Jim Wooten’s May/June story on cameramen. I love words, but compelling images are pretty darn good, too. And it’s always interesting for me to watch a cameraman at work and then see the story on the news as the cameraman saw it. Invariably I’m surprised by nuances they caught that I missed. So kudos to CJR for reminding us all about some of the unsung heroes of journalism.

Phil de Haan
Director of media relations
Calvin College
Grand Rapids, Michigan

To read the articles in the July/August 2006 issue, click here.

Has America ever needed a media defender more than now? Help us by joining CJR today.