'Chicago S-T' Is Forthright on Employee's Suicide

By: Greg Mitchell The debate over when and how newspapers should cover local suicides -- particularly when the deceased is one of their own -- gained more attention late last week when the Chicago Sun-Times chose to bare all in the death of its famed columnist Steve Neal. As E&P first documented three weeks ago, the The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk has refused to air any information about, or even confirm, that one of its best known reporters, a former embed in Iraq, had committed suicide.

A lengthy analysis of these two contrasting cases appears at Poynter Online in an article by Matt Thompson, "Two Suicides, Two Newsrooms, Two Decisions."

The Sun-Times first reported Neal's unexpected death last Thursday. The following day it reported the local coroner's office calling it a "suicide situation" and the local police referring to finding his body at the wheel of his car in his garage after a "carbon monoxide alarm." Not much question about what happened there. This open approach allowed Neal's wife to comment on some of the medical and professional problems dogging him.

Back on Feb. 1, the Virginian-Pilot had announced the death of its reporter Dennis O'Brien without revealing the cause of death. Two days later, E&P had ascertained that he not only killed himself -- he did it in a public park and had arranged for one of his colleagues at the paper to find his body. Editor Kay Tucker Addis told Poynter's Thompson that she could not even remember an office discussion about whether to release any details about O'Brien's death. According to the Poynter article, however, the Pilot's own ethics policy says that the paper will report a suicide only when it "occurred in public or involved a public figure." O'Brien's death would seem to qualify on at least one if not both counts.