Good morning. I'm James Holman from the Washington Post and this is the Daily

202 for Thursday, May 14. In today's news, 40% of American households making less than $40,000 a year lost a job in March.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down that governor's stay-at-home order. And the sidelined

federal vaccine chief will testify today that we're headed for the darkest

winter in modern history if the Trump administration doesn't get its act together.

But first, the big idea.

Brian Marquardt has spent years confronting death

through writing about lives.

As the obituaries editor at the Boston Globe,

he has conducted thousands of interviews over the past 14 years.

But never have the conversations been as affecting as now.

Never has he received such reader feedback or so many requests for stories.

He told the Post's Alahay Azadi, there's never been anything like this. Across

the board, Brian says, every part of this job is more intense. At least 83,304 Americans have died as of this morning from the coronavirus. Yesterday alone, 1,641 more deaths were reported.

This has put new focus on a time-honored but frequently overlooked side of the newspaper

business.

At a time when social distancing has forced us to abandon many of our usual grief rituals, obituaries and paid death notices have turned

into important proxies for mourning. And their sheer volume on the printed page is a stark reminder

of a disease that might otherwise be invisible for many readers.

The impact of COVID-19 is most dramatically seen for many papers and arise in the number of death notices.

The paid ads written and submitted by families and funeral

homes, which often run alongside Stafford News obituaries. On May 3rd, the Boston Globe

...