Someone tell Chris Matthews that newspapers used to routinely publish birth notices.

[Skidmore]

They quit doing it sometime in the last 10 years or so because hospitals would no longer release birth information following some kidnappings of newborns.

Why does he keep associating this with social prominence?

[dsc]

1. because big city papers likely did only print announcements of socially prominant babies

like they only do socially priminant weddings.

[Gormy Cuss]

Right, all births were announced in smaller community newspapers but most major newspapers

didn't want to waste the space accounting for every child.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. In Minneapolis there were daily birth announcements

in very small print up through the 1980s, I think.

I think they were still there when I left Minneapolis in 1984, but they were gone by the time I came back in 2003.

[Gormy Cuss]

6. Thus "most." I think for some newspapers it was something well received by readers

and important just like the marriage announcements and obits.

[davidinalameda]

2. the local papers here publish birth announcements

:shrug:

[itsrobert]

3. Yup, they listed them all the time

Since probably before Bengi Franklin.

[Curmudgeoness]

4. Our paper lists them too. But you have to pay in the big city

papers. So it is a socially prominent issue if you are not in BFE.

[Hekate]

7. Tweety should talk to a Hawaii old-timer. Honolulu was a small city by Mainland standards...

Anyway, I thought it was standard practice to publish "vital statistics" for free. Nothing fancy, mind you-- you had to pay for a real obituary, write-up of the wedding, or birth announcement with cute pic. But the basic info about births, marriages, and deaths were obtained by the newspaper staff from the County Clerk-Recorder or equivalent official, and published in one column.

The whole "social prominence" thing goes back a long, long way, to the days when a girl's debut was a big deal. :eyes: We're talking rich white girls here, not a quinceneara for a Mexican-American teen. The newspaper's social columnist would attend the functions of the well-off and prominent in whatever town it was and give them a flattering write-up, mentioning details like the menu and who wore what. Like Chelsea Clinton's wedding.

The young Obamas were university students and their parents were not prominent. If they'd actually had an engagement instead of a quick marriage, there might have been a little article simply because Obama Sr. had already been written up as the first African student at UH. As it was, the marriage was quiet and the baby's birth announcement was published the same as everybody else born that week.

Tweety, Tweety, Tweety. Well, at least he's defending the President from the insane Birthers.

Hekate