Covering a death by suicide in a rural newspaper can be a tricky business. Many editors choose not to, mostly in an effort to show regard for the victim's family. Those who do cover such deaths may also face the difficult prospect of writing about someone they knew. The editor of a rural Tennessee weekly recently provided a good example of how to thread that needle, especially with the suicide of a teenager, something that has become more common in recent years.
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| Brad Martin |
Brad Martin, editor of the Hickman County Times in Centerville, 50 miles west of Nashville, took a two-pronged approach: He wrote a straightforward story for the bottom of the front page, with the five Ws and several quotes from the friends and family of Jacob Hetherington, 17. On the opinion page, he wrote a long editorial about how he had met Jacob and his twin brother years ago while leading a Boy Scout troop.
Martin wrote that Jacob had seemed fine at a chance encounter a few weeks before his suicide, and cautioned that even sociable people like Jacob can fall prey to suicide if they don't have someone to talk to about difficult thoughts. He asked readers to reach out to others and make sure they have someone safe to talk to, and posted the phone number for the national suicide prevention hotline.
Martin is no stranger to the issue of rural suicide. In a 2016 article for The Daily Yonder, he wrote about how he became galvanized about the subject in 2003 when 13 people died by suicide in his town that year. That year he helped form the Hickman County Suicide Prevention Task Force, which has been a constant presence in the community with information on support and prevention.
Reaching out to others is an "inexact science," Martin wrote in his editorial, "but in a small place, where we know most of our neighbors, our job is to try, and to keep trying, isn't it?"
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