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ActonofMAM t1_ixzi8kt wrote

Reply to comment by fail_whale_fan_mail in Will we know if Thomas Pynchon dies? by BananaBeach007

Reporters call that "legwork" and it is absolutely someone's job to do so.

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fail_whale_fan_mail t1_ixzmzda wrote

Yeah, maybe to verify after you get a tip or something. Checking the logs consistently would be a huge amount of time and effort for very little reward. And they're not even publicly available in many areas.

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ActonofMAM t1_ixzuh5c wrote

I have a journalism degree, although I haven't worked in the field for many years. You?

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fail_whale_fan_mail t1_ixzxb85 wrote

I worked as a journalist for about five years and left the field early-covid. We'd comb through police reports and court logs, but never death records. Pretty sure recent ones weren't publicly available where I worked and it would have been a wildly poor use of our time to request and read through all the names if they were. We heard about the deaths we wrote about through a variety of sources and would follow-up with relevant officials to verify.

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