Now Some Old News
I stumbled upon the web log of an author Richard Webster (who's written books such as A Brief History of Blasphemy, and Why Freud Was Wrong—no, I haven't read any of them). In a blog entry from half a year ago, he mentions that last year or so (even further back in time!) he was browsing through newspaper style guides for notes on capitalisation that he would adopt in his own book. In a style guide of the Guardian, he had found:
Mr, Ms, Mrs, Miss
use after first mention on news and comment (but not sport) pages, unless you are writing about an artist, author, journalist, musician, criminal or dead person; defendants keep their honorifics unless they are convicted.
Mr. Webster (heh) then goes on to say: I still haven't grasped what it is about artists, authors and journalists which seems to put them on a level with those who are dead. But it was the final phrase that I found most stark and most disturbing…