“I talked to a colleague who worked as an editor for a couple of HI’s major newspapers about this. The reply was that anyone can submit a birth announcement. Nobody checks up on them. No different than submitting an engagement announcement, etc. The paper takes the info submitted & prints it.”
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The Hawaii newspaper “announcements” are not paid vanity announcements. They are listings from the Hawaii Dept. of Health Statistics. Unless you provide some evidence that anyone could pay to have their name added, you’re pretty much S.O.L.
Nobody pays to have announcments placed in papers. Sometimes the paper will collect data from vital stats, but anyone can send in a birth announcement & they are not vetted. This from a longtime editor at major HI paper.
The practice is the same for most local papers. You send in a birth, engagement announcement, whatever. Nobody investigates.