honoluluadvertiser.com

Sponsored by:

Comment, blog & share photos

Log in | Become a member
The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Sunday, March 17, 2002

AFTER DEADLINE
Obituaries form a piece of our life

By Anne Harpham

One of the best-read pages in most newspapers is the obituary page. It's no different at The Advertiser.

Each day on the second page of the Hawai'i section, we run obituaries of local residents and former Hawai'i residents. There is no charge to either the families or the mortuaries.

In many metropolitan areas, newspapers no longer print free obituaries for everyone. Instead, they limit publication to death notices, which are paid for by family members. The free obituaries that are prepared by our news staff are straightforward, and written in a style that ensures consistency and fairness in the amount of information included about each person.

The Advertiser also offers paid death notices, in which the families can write the obituary of a loved one and include whatever information they choose. They can also run a photograph.

We also write news obituaries about well-known people or people who have made a significant impact in the community.

The decision about whether to write a news obituary is made by editors, who base their decisions on how well known a person is and whether an account of their lives would be of community interest.

Pre-dawn patrol

At 4:30 a.m. Monday through Friday, Richard Couch, wire editor for The Advertiser's afternoon edition, rolls into work. In the next seven hours, he will monitor the news of the nation and the world and put together a package of late-breaking stories that are often significantly different than the news report in the A section of the morning paper.

He is just the first of several staff members who put together the PM edition. An hour after Couch gets to work, news editor John Bender arrives to decide what will be on the front page. As news breaks, Bender will adjust the page throughout the morning, sometimes adding new stories as late as noon. The PM edition is on downtown newsstands just after lunch and on doorsteps by 4:30 p.m.

The PM edition marked its first anniversary Friday. It has found a niche with readers who like to get an afternoon paper. Because of our time advantage over the Mainland, the PM edition offers updated national and international news, breaking local news and business updates, as well as the day's closing stock prices.

On Friday, for example, the PM edition included the sad news of the University of Hawai'i men's basketball team's defeat in the NCAA Tournament, as well as the life sentence ordered for Andrea Yates, the Houston woman convicted of killing her five children.

The morning edition remains The Advertiser's franchise, but the PM edition offers another choice.

Senior editor Anne Harpham is The Advertiser's reader representative. Reach her at aharpham@honoluluadvertiser.com.