Facebook groups changed MANY things. Instead of waiting for print or radio news, people raced to the town's Facebook group and had all the details sooner.
The "pending notification of next of kin" was a long-standing spirit of cooperation that existed between LE and the "powers that be". Now, often the reporters had all the names and info, just waiting to release it when the boss said it was ok. Reporters were on the phone, gathering the information in preparation of release time, but there was a definite concerted cooperation among the multiple agencies.
Now, from my perspective, looking back, I suspect "the hold to release" agreement likely covered other occasions that might have tended to be embarrassing or election-losing for certain people in power. They were covering and helping to cover each other's backsides. The editor I worked for had the absolute integrity he would NEVER have hidden a name - even for his own family. It might be briefly held, but not lost/hidden. The editor before and before that??? Can't say for sure.
Where I grew up (small town), that happened anyway.
There is a café in that town where men gather from about 5-6 am onward, police among them. We lived across the street from a policeman. Policemen, in those days, said a lot of what they knew. I think it helped deter crime - because, after all, the criminals were local, with local cultural patterns. Maybe it's just because I have known these people a long time, I have to say that they still say a lot that they wouldn't say directly to a TV camera (the only kind of reporter seen recently in that small town, which was in the news due to having, at the time, California's largest wildfire pass through).
The notification of next of kin kept things out of the
papers, but not out of the neighborhood grapevine. If people heard shots or screaming, they talked about it. If ambulances and police came, people talked (and I believe this is especially healthy for those who are secondary victims). Indeed, there was a DV incident in a neighborhood local to me and NextDoor provided many, many details (including how many other times LE was called to that address).
Your last paragraph is pure gold. My editor would never have hidden a name (or address) either (I was once a cub reporter for the small town paper). But today, it's all on SM and not in the police blotter, making the police look inept (judging by public opinion). And the paper thrived.
Something is changing. And FB and X are now somehow...press? Oh, how I looked up to journalists and wanted to be one. Now I get my local news mostly from "citizen journalists."
The major papers are now behind paywalls. Tsk. Tsk.
We had a double homicide and a murder-suicide on our block in my hometown. We had a negligent drowning of a 2 year old on my block (we might post those stories on WS today). We had a few suicides in the town and those were definitely censored, out of courtesy to the family. We all knew a great deal, through local talk, about each of these events. No one needed social media to outpace newspaper reporting. Everyone raced to the telephone (and there were party lines up until I was in my late teens, so we kids learned a heckuva lot). My dad would jump in his car and go down to that café for details. My uncle practically lived in that café (and the man who ran the café was a great and rapid distributor of detailed knowledge about crime, death, illness, accidents, weddings, funerals and births). Didn't need SM to find out all that went on in our community - but of course, now, we find out about other people's communities as well. No one checked with LE or anyone else before distributing information, if they had it. And a lot of it was fairly accurate.
Car accident victims (including fatalities) were reported on right away. One big difference was that everyone knew most everyone else, within a couple of degrees. So when my cousin died in a car crash, discovered at 3 am, the policeman who first arrived knew my uncle and sent someone up to his house immediately. My cousin's death was reported in that afternoon's local newspaper.
