I know that journalism largely consists in saying, “Lord Jones Dead” to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer

“The Purple Wig,” The Wisdom of Father Brown (1914)
    (Source)

While the quoted phrase uses a headline style, omitting the article, the vast majority of copies of it read "Lord Jones is dead." Other paraphrases:

• "Journalism is there to tell us Jones is dead, even though it didn’t tell us he was alive."
• "Journalism is the art of making interesting the fact that Lady Jones is dead , even to those who had never known that she was alive."
• "Our business of news is telling the world that Lord Jones is dead when most of us did not even know he was alive."