Saturday, 3 December 2011  Your newspaper BMDs column is now
live on Twitter  Image via Wikipedia Long ago, when people
tended to AskJeeves instead of just Asking, and citing Wikipedia
as a source got you a newsdesk hairdrier (so, circa 1994), being
rota-ed to do the Births, Deaths and Marriages scan was an
envied job.   Usually you were the early shift reporter, so you
would potentially already have bagged at least one edition's on-
day splash from calls, and then you were able to settle back and
peruse around a dozen pages of arrivals, departures, public
notices and classifieds in the name of Human Interest stories.
Once you found a decent lead lurking in the BMDs, there was
often a friendly vicar (M&Ds), obliging undertaker (Ds) or
several postings from proud family and friends (Bs) to help you
track down your quarry, aided by the phone book and directory
enquiries. Failing that,  an advertising colleague manning the
classifieds ads booking might agree to look for the phone number
of whomever had taken out