What's with the UK and its delayed obits?

[23skidoo]

I could have posted this in the Misc section, but the two names involved here are both Doctor Who veterans, and a lot of British fans post here, so maybe they might have some insight into a little mystery.

On December 9, the Guardian ran a very nice obituary for Mervyn Haisman, a writer for Doctor Who in the 1960s best remembered for co-creating the Yeti.

Which would have been news if not for the fact Mr. Haisman died on October 29.

On Sunday, Dec. 12, the Telegraph ran an obituary for Graham Crowden, who played Soldeed in the Tom Baker story The Horns of Nimon.

Again, very sad. And again not news as Mr. Crowden died on Oct. 17!

Now, I'm all for "taking a breath". Our media runs at too fast a pace sometimes. People want their news reported in microseconds now, rather than read about it the next day, or later in the week (in a weekly newspaper). Or a month later in a magazine. But even so, two major newspapers running obituaries a month and a half after the fact is a bit much. The December issue of Doctor Who Magazine doesn't arrive here in Canada until January, but I bet they already had both obits ages before the two newspapers got around to them.

(And in neither case was the news held or anything. There was some news media coverage of both deaths the day or the day after they happened.)

These aren't the only examples I've seen of this. So my question to the British folks out there is - is this normal? Or are so many notables dropping dead in the UK that there's a backlog?

Alex

 

[Tomalak]

Basic answer is that newspapers only have finite space for obituaries, and obviously if there are a couple of higher profile deaths on a particular day or week, they have to wait until there is space.

Also they don't write themselves, and I believe obits are usually submitted freelance rather than by staff writers, so it depends who is writing about whom.

Obituaries aren't "news" anyway; they are features. Often the paper will carry a notice or story noting a death, and a fuller obituary will come along later.

 

[VDCNI]

The Guardian gives over two pages to Obits so that is at most 4 they can manage a day (5 or 6 days as week - not sure they run them on a Saturday) and they cover a huge amount of people.

For example today there was Richard Holbrooke - a 'major' death so that's a very fast response. Eric Fullilove, a director who helped create Skippy The Bush Kangeroo (died 24th October!) & David Frisby a sociologist (died 20th November). The Telegraph has a similar schedule/range of people to cover. Given that I'm not shocked it took them so long to get to your examples (though I'm a little surprised by Crowden).

Plus as already mentioned the news of the deaths would have been shown at the time - Obits are more a considered response/overview of the persons life so immediacy isn't really that important unless the death is a major news story. And for those people they tend to have obits on file.

DWM might get to them faster but in most cases people that worked on Doctor Who are of much greater interest to DWM readers than to the population as a whole.

 

[diankra]

Most obits are held 'on library' (a friend used to be Obits editor at the Telgraph), which is why you soimetimes find a note that the obit writer 'died in 2006 (etc)'.
AS others have said, it is a space issue. And across the four quality papers, there's usually on one that runs late.