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Driver's Seat
When you’re dead, what is said
By BOB DRIVER, columnist
Article published on Wednesday, July 11, 2007 |
This week the obituaries appearing in the St. Petersburg Times stopped being treated as news items. Instead, they are now part of the newspaper’s advertising department. Henceforth, most of the obits you see in the Times will be written by family members of the deceased. The family will pay for the obits. The Times is following a trend that’s been evolving for years in the newspaper industry.
It’s a good move, especially the part about requiring the family to do the writing. Throughout the history of newspapers, the time and talent of trained reporters have been wasted by forcing them to write the obits of ordinary citizens – a catchall classification that includes you, me and 99 percent of humankind.
A typical obit gave a person’s name, age, residence, place of birth, primary occupation, and a list of family survivors. Many obits also stated the dead person’s military service and education. Point is, recording these mundane details required little journalistic experience. It demanded patience and accuracy, and that’s about it.
Under the new system, family members will be the sole source of what appears in the obituary. The transfer of the deceased’s data from a family spokesman to the newspaper will essentially be straight dictation.
The new method assures that a degree of fiction (i.e., exaggeration and outright lies) can be expected in the obits we’ll be reading. An Army major, for example, can easily be upgraded to the rank of colonel; a sarcastic, vindictive grandmother may be transformed into a saint, beloved by all. Thousands of years will be shaved from the collective ages of the deceased subjects.
On the other hand, families will be free to include many fascinating facts and opinions about their loved one’s life and personality. Under the old system, these colorful highlights might have been omitted from the obit.
Obits never have been the place to seek the rock-bottom truth about a person’s life or character. The classic example of this are the obits appearing in some British newspapers. They are usually gracefully phrased encomiums in which every soldier fought bravely, and every teacher was a Mr. or Ms. Chips who inspired each student they taught. Are these distortions of the truth harmful to society, or the readers? Probably not. The dictum “speak only good of the dead” isn’t a bad rule to follow, even if it involves a little fibbing.
The Times said the new obit format will feature a daily staff-written piece chronicling “a particularly unusual or noteworthy life.” I look forward to reading these. Over the years, I’ve written a number of obits about notables. Done right, these accounts can be good journalism. But they’re usually tough to research and write.
You – the obit writer – want to capture the flavor and flair of the person who died. So you call a dozen or more of the deceased’s closest friends to get specific details on what made him/her so special. But often the most you can pry out of them will be “Oh, gosh, he was just a great guy. A lot of laughs.” Just try submitting that level of commentary to your editor.
I don’t envy the life of the editor who must make the daily decision about which dead person has had an unusual or noteworthy life (and therefore deserves the featured obit treatment), as opposed to other recently departed souls who don’t quite make the grade. I can imagine some of the phone calls that will come in from status-conscious survivors. “My uncle, a high school principal for 33 years, was 10 times more noteworthy than that car dealer you gave 600 words to in yesterday’s edition! Sheesh.”
I worked three years for the Toledo (Ohio) Blade, a pretty good paper in its time. But like many newspapers (even the good ones) it had lousy management. One of its newsroom policies was that every reporter – even those who had 10 or 20 years experience – had to write obits. At any moment on any working day, a busy reporter might get the command: “Pick up on Line 1 – Dumbrowski’s got four obits.” (For some reason, most of Toledo’s funeral directors were Polish). Needless to say, the Blade had a high rate of turnover among its reporters. Management finally got smart and assigned all the routine obits to one person, a woman who doubled as a receptionist. I was told she did a superb job. I’m sure the Times has obit handlers just as good as she was.
Send Bob Driver an e-mail at tralee71@comcast.net.
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Article published on Wednesday, July 11, 2007
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