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."