Share your thoughts on the display of Michael Jackson’s obituary
Was Michael Jackson’s death worth front-page display in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch? For editors yesterday, the answer was clearly yes.
But how much display was appropriate? News of his death arrived late afternoon. (Bob Rose will be posting a separate blog item on our wait for confirmation before posting the news on STLtoday.com.) So few readers of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch this morning read the obituary as a “news” item. We selected a New York Times article by Brooks Barnes that we thought provided context and depth about the life of Jackson.
We decided to display our strongest local story — about the police towing scandal — at the top of the page and place Jackson’s photo and obituary between two other local stories — mid-page but above the fold. We know that readers of the Post-Dispatch can get national and world news from many other sources — online, on TV, on radio. So we strive to be the area’s top source for local news, and to prominently display news that readers aren’t getting elsewhere. The Post-Dispatch was the first to break the towing scandal and has led in reporting subsequent developments.
When obituaries are displayed on Page One, it’s usually to mark the historic nature of the person. Jackson seems to clearly qualify. Barnes’ article likened his role in the world of music to Elvis and the Beatles.
A few colleagues today have suggested that Jackson’s obituary should have led the page.
Many newspapers — the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and the Washington Post — played Jackson’s death at the top of their fronts. A scroll through Today’s Front Pages on the web site newseum.org shows many papers displayed Jackson’s death more prominently than the Post-Dispatch.




Steve Parker is the deputy managing editor for news, and oversees the Post-Dispatch's front page. STLtoday's online news editors are on his newsroom team. Parker has been at the paper since September 1980.
13 year old boys everywhere breathed a sigh of relief yesterday