Who is Mrs. Perl from The Virgin Suicides and what is their importance?

Mrs. Perl is a local reporter who writes a few articles following the girls' suicides. She uses Cecilia's suicide to raise awareness to a perceived national trend of teenage suicides. She later publishes a series of articles about the death of the remaining girls as she tries (in vain, according to the neighborhood boys' analysis) to provide an explanation to these unfortunate events. She represents the self-serving, faceless mass media that mushroomed during the early part of the 1970s. She never appears in person in the novel and no description is otherwise provided.