The Evolution of the Ed Koch Obituary

When former New York Mayor Edward I. Koch died early on Friday, The Times was prepared. At least, it looked that way.

Web editors reached for the well-written and seemingly comprehensive obituary by Robert D. McFadden - more than 5,000 words. (The Times regularly prepares obituaries in advance, sometimes many years in advance, for prominent figures.  Mr. McFadden works strictly on advance obituaries.)

It described Mr. Koch as “the master showman of City Hall, who parlayed shrewd political instincts and plenty of chutzpah into three tumultuous terms as New York’s mayor with all the tenacity, zest and combativeness that personified his city of golden dreams …”

But later that morning, obituary editors heard from a Times reporter that there was a substantial omission. There was only the most glancing reference to the AIDS crisis that was raging during the Koch administration.

The mayor was much criticized, at the time and afterward, for what was seen as the city’s inadequate response. And Mr. Koch’s own sexuality was not addressed in the obituary. Was he a closeted gay man ignoring this crisis in the gay world At the same time, readers were noticing and complaining on Twitter.

William McDonald, the obituaries editor, said he found no reason to disagree.

“I said, ‘Yes, of course,’” he told me Monday. “It needed to be addressed and we corrected it as soon as we could.”

The article went through a number of revisions during the day, and when it first appeared in print, on Saturday, it included several paragraphs on those subjects.

Mr. McFadden had begun writing the obituary in 1999 and had continued to revise it over the years, Mr. McDonald said.

“In some ways, the Web gives us an opportunity to try to perfect it,” Mr. McDonald said. “We can’t provide a pristine piece on demand at any time of da! y.”

And, Mr. McDonald noted, an obituary “is not the definitive biography.”

“It bothers me that we didn’t have it complete, but we learn things as we go,” he said. “You’d like to not have to do it, and in 99 percent of cases, we don’t have to.”

Even the revisions caused further complaints. David Steinhardt, a reader from of Hancock, Vt., complained that The Times had greatly underestimated the number of AIDS victims during the Koch era.

He wrote:

“Hundreds” afflicted with AIDS in NYC during the Koch mayoralty I recall the numbers were closer to 30,000. “Hundreds” cannot mean 300 hundred. Thank you for addressing this continuing insult to the memory of AIDS victims who died of indifference during the 1980s.

That part of the obituary read as follows:

“Mr. Koch was also harshly criticized for what was called his slow, inadequate response to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. Hundreds of New Yorkers were desperately ill nd dying in a baffling public health emergency, and critics, especially in the gay community, accused him of being a closeted homosexual reluctant to confront the crisis for fear of being exposed.”

Mr. McDonald said he had not heard the numbers complaint until I brought it to his attention around noon on Monday, but that he would look into it. He said the use of “hundreds” came from looking back at news stories from the 1980s.

“We may have been underestimating it back then,” he said.

But after doing so, he decided that hundreds was not an error, given the context in which it was written.

He referred to city government figures regarding AIDS deaths in the five boroughs. They show  ”that the numbers were in the hundreds beginning about 1982 and remained so until about mid-1985, when the total hit the 2,000 mark. By the time Koch left office in 1989, the total was approaching 6,000.”

But the passage in the obituary, he said, “refers to Koch’s response ov! er time, ! as the crisis grew â€" thousands were not dying of AIDS until well into the decade, according to New York City figures.”

Mr. McDonald’s conclusion, therefore, is that “‘hundreds’ does not seem wrong to me.”

The use of ‘hundreds’ may not be technically wrong in its limited context. But it does seem to reduce the severity and scope of the AIDS crisis, and readers’ objections to that impression are understandable.