Otterblog

We carried a small police brief

today about a woman who apparently killed herself by jumping off a bridge in Yadkin County. Careful readers of the Journal know that we don’t publish a lot of suicides these days. That’s a change from the past.

Our old policy was that we reported all suicides in our circulation area. Or at least we tried to. But our policy changed over the years to reflect two different concerns. The first was whether there was compelling public interest in a very private and painful decision by somebody to end their own life. Our collective decision was that most times there wasn’t. The second—although less important—was more pragmatic. Finding out about suicides was extremely difficult. In some counties, they weren’t reported in a timely fashion and were on occasion covered up. The result was haphazard coverage, which didn’t make a lot of sense.

Here’s the basic rule now. We report suicides for three general categories. First are suicides that take place in a public setting. Second would be a suicide by a public official or similar newsworthy person. Third are trend stories that examine the issue of suicide, such as past coverage of high suicide rates among the elderly in some rural counties.