Once a training tool
for new reporters,
it’s now an art form
By Don Harrison
Sports and the comics are what I used to turn to first; now it’s the obituaries. Too often, I read about people I knew.
Newspapers take obits more seriously than they once did. It used to be a job dumped on novices.
It was supposed to be good training. If you could glean all the relevant facts from a bereaved loved one, it was believed, you had mastered the art of the interview.
Except that survivors usually are not only willing to talk about the dear departed — they’re eager.
If you can’t get a good interview in an obit call, you should consider some other line of work.
Mark of a true pro
Obits were once routine — spare, factual, without embellishment.
That was before Jim Nicholson.
Jim, now retired, had been an investigative reporter on the Bulletin. When it folded and he moved to the Daily News, he was assigned to obits.
The mark of a pro is that whatever you’re assigned to do, you do it well.
Jim was a pro.
He turned obits into an art form. Concentrating on ordinary people, rather than on mover/shakers, he pressed for anecdotes, got trenchant quotes and found good angles. Even if you didn’t know the dear departed, Jim’s obits made fascinating reading.
Newspapers all over began rediscovering the obit. They’d send staffers to Philadelphia to sit at Jim’s feet. He became a legend in the profession. Rightfully so.
Now there’s even a magazine called Obit. It says it’s “an editorial outlet ... on a taboo subject with the aim of challenging assumptions about death and dying through life stories and innovative thinking.”
Can’t complain (if you could)
Newspapers with the manpower often stockpile obits. Writers gather information about a famous person, and write the obit in advance, so that when the Grim Reaper does arrive, all it takes is some updating.
The Philadelphia Inquirer’s front page obit on Lady Bird Johnson was over Gwen Florio’s byline, but Gwen had long since left the Tower of Truth at Broad and Callowhill. When she was still on staff, apparently, she had written a Lady Bird obit for filing.
Being interviewed for your obit by the New York Times is considered a great honor. Reportedly, the Times has 1,200 pre-written obits in the hopper. The Rosa Parks obit in the New York Times was by E.J. Shipp, who had not worked at the Times for 12 years; she had written it in 1990.
In some newsrooms, staffers write their own obits.
That way, you can’t complain that the paper got it wrong (not that you’ll be in a position to complain).
Getting ‘the last word’
At a California retirement community, a retired public relations executive helps his neighbors craft their own obits. Most, he says, are thrilled at the idea because they can include things survivors aren’t likely to know about.
Some people, he said, read newspaper obits first thing each day “just to make sure they’re still alive.” Others, he said, avoid reading the obits “for fear they’ll be there.”
Writing your own obit, he says, guarantees that you’ll “have the last word first.”
Good point. I’ve written mine.
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