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Tory Brecht's avatar

Great column Dave.

As an editor and prior to that a reporter, I have always firmly believed that many people - even those experiencing tragedy - find purpose and clarity in telling their story. A respectful and sensitive reporter can absolutely play a role in helping them do so. As noted, it must be approached with the utmost care and consideration.

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Dave Busiek's avatar

I received the following email from Herb Strentz, retired dean of the Drake University School of Journalism. Another reader forwarded this column to him, and with his permission, here's what Herb had to say. He provides some good information:

Thanks for sending Dave's piece on interviewing in times of grief. It resonates with me.

For one thing, to me, asking whether reporters should interview grieving people is like asking whether they should interview public officials.

And of course it can be done poorly or offensively.

As I recall, Nick Lamberto, a veteran Register reporter from the old days, was known for his ability and concerns in getting through to people in trying situations, serving the people and readers well.

In the course of a few years, Herb Strentz as a young reporter must have interviewed, mostly by phone, several hundreds of people in grieving situations. The's because his newspaper, the Fresno Bee, with a circulation pf 100,000 or more, made it a point to write and run obituaries on everyone who died in the area. Everyone. So in the course of a workday, depending upon one's shift, you routinely wrote an obit or two. (There was a "dead board" with listing and information about the deceased and you were expected to go to that as time allowed.)

Christmas Day was an awful time to make such calls, but we'd do it and families did not mind. We'd call mostly to verify information received from a funeral home, but of course would get into other topics.

What Strentz learned:

• The death of a loved one or friend is always shocking regardless of cause or age.

• There would always be at least one person in the family who would take charge of handling such calls or accepted the call as non-invasive

• People really appreciated that their newspaper cared enough about them and the deceased to call and write the story. This was before paid obits became the rule, severing newspaper-community ties in many ways.

Before the onset of social media when it came to deaths by non-natural causes, the reporter might be the one to break the news of a death. That happened to me twice — veteran reporters and common sense were helpful then, of course, because routine obit tasks went out the window.

What bugs me most about death coverage today is not the interview so much as when the reporter suggests that Iowans respond to deaths in better, more helpful ways than other people might. That's what makes us special, kind of thing.

Herb

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