A Death Notice for Obituaries?
by James M. Naughton
AUGUST 14, 2012 TAGS:
James M. Naughton, a longtime political reporter, editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer and newsroom legend, died yesterday at the age of 73. In 2010, Naughton wrote this critique of how the print media remembers the dead.
Tom O'Meara was a close friend of our daughter Lara. As he neared death at the too-soon age of 44 in Santa Monica, I remembered Tom had worked for years to develop electric cars for General Motors.
As Tom’s condition grew dire, Lara went to visit him. Tom was no longer able to use his iPhone, and I wanted to help take his mind off illness, however briefly, so Lara texted for Tom. He and I chatted about the Chevy Volt, the GM electric car that was just weeks away from production. I asked if Tom had anything to do with the Volt.
"Tom says he was on a team that made software for it," Lara texted back.
When we got word a week later that Tom had succumbed to his cancer, I looked Tom up on LinkedIn, the workplace social network. Tom had, as usual, been modest; he had led the team that developed the Volt's computer firmware, a key element of the electric vehicle.
Tom deserved a classy obituary, I thought. I'd written a few obits in my days as reporter, and Man Dies Just Before Fruition of Life's Work on Important New Vehicle sounded to me like a story.
I e-mailed friends at the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, asking them to forward information I provided to the paper's obit desk. Neither newspaper responded. I asked the friends what happened and each forwarded more information to the obit desk. Again, the New York Times did not respond. An editor at the Los Angeles Times had the courtesy to send me this explanation:
"Thank you for submitting the material on Tom O’Meara. Just as we do with each name that is submitted to us, we sent the material you provided to our editorial library for a background check. Our library conducted its search and I'm afraid they didn't find quite enough for us to consider a news obituary. These searches involve not only past issues of the Times but a wide array of periodicals and newspapers. While there is no doubt he had a solid professional career and was an important member of the community, we didn't find the kind of material we were hoping for that would make his story news to a broader circulation."
In other words, they do a Google search, and if you're not already famous or notorious, don't expect original reporting for an obit, even at one of America's premier newspapers.
Had either newspaper done minimal reporting on the life of Tom O'Meara, it would have learned:
• Tom’s colleagues regarded him as a genius, and those who knew him best filled 79 pages on CaringBridge with get-well and condolence wishes.
• Tom was responsible for at least two patents held by GM.
• Tom recently had learned how to fly a small plane.
• Tom once bribed a guard to let him climb to the top of an Egyptian pyramid at midnight.
• • Tom was nearing completion of a master's degree in spiritual psychology.
• Tom had such a phenomenally spiritual outlook that he wrote this in one of his CaringBridge updates:
"I am not fighting cancer, I am recognizing that the tumors are a part of me. Cells that made a decision to do their own thing and stop cooperating with their neighbors. Cells that are lost, in a sense, and need love and forgiveness to rejoin the plan for the whole body. If you think about it, please send the cells of the masses love and forgiveness as well. Let them know that they are joyfully welcome back to the rest of the body. "
Tom O’Meara was deserving of an uplifting and memorable obituary. More to the point, so were readers of obits. An obit is, to be sure, a courtesy to the bereaved. In reading a published account of the heroics and losses, the trials or triumphs, and especially the redemptive experiences of a loved one, family and friends are reinforced in their knowledge that the loss was a punctuation mark on a life lived in earnest.
“Obituaries matter to families, more than I realized before my personal experience with the death of a close family member,” Mary Brenzel, one of Tom’s three siblings, said.
But the journalistic reason to publish a display obituary is not to salve the losses of the survivors. Deaths are news. They are published to inform a wider audience, sometimes a much wider audience, of the conduct of admirable -- or scurrilous -- individuals whose lives were notable.
Feature or display obituaries, reported as news by journalists, certainly should be free. Newspapers long have charged funeral directors, who pass the cost along to survivors, for death notices, which can say anything and at any length. In the last half-dozen years, some newspapers have begun charging outrageous fees to publish these items, including obits written by family members who have journalistic chops. The Kansas City Star charged $500 to publish a feature-length obituary Mike Hoyt of Columbia Journalism Review wrote about his mother in 2006. And last April, Alan Mutter, who writes Reflections of a Newsosaur, blogged about having “stumbled across the problem this week when I tried to buy a death notice in my local paper, the San Francisco Chronicle, which proposed charging $450 for the one-day run of a crappy-looking, 182-word death notice.” He chose instead to give the money to a scholarship fund for his late friend’s children. I like what Steve Buttry posted online last July at The Buttry Diary: “In the long and shameful history of newspapers refusing to innovate, this might be the most shortsighted, stupid move yet.”
Indeed, a study by the Readership Institute at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University acknowledged that “space and revenue concerns led newspapers to run fewer, shorter obituaries, or shift them from a news item to a classified advertising revenue category.” But its study of obituary readership, mostly at smaller newspapers, “shows that obituaries -- along with community announcements and stories about ordinary people -- have the highest potential of all news items to grow readership.”
“A good obituary gives more than the barebones details, mere lists of beloved family and friends, funeral arrangements, etc. A meaningful obituary tells a bit of a story, gives the world a glimpse of that person who once lived a vibrant life.” Mary Brenzel said. “The stories in obituaries convey the noble, the ordinary, the great and small ways in which a person touched our lives.”
In the 1980s, the American Society of Newspaper Editors gave annual awards for two years to writers of obits in an effort to encourage improvement of the craft. The award first went to Jim Nicholson, whose profiles in the Philadelphia Daily News of a blinded World War II veteran or a woman who worked many years for Tastykake or a restaurateur whose clientele included mobsters validated his belief that “every person is a lead obit. There are no unimportant obits. There are only reporters who ask unimportant questions or bad questions.” Or, these days, no questions at all.
Nicholson also said memorably in an interview in Best Newspaper Writing 1987, a compilation of the ASNE writing awards, that what his obits were doing was “celebrating life, not death. Death is incidental to the story. If you took the phrase ‘died on Tuesday’ out of the story, it would be a feature. It would not be an obituary. It would be a human-interest feature about a hell of a nice guy or girl.”
Tom O’Meara was one of those, a hell of a nice guy. There ought to be mayors and bank robbers among those in the obit section. So should there be Tastykake workers and men whose blindness confined their life to one city block -- or software engineers whose contributions to green technology cars bear fruit just after their defeat by brutal cancers.
James M. Naughton is president emeritus of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.
Read Jim Nicholson's Response HERE
"Beyond our obituaries informing or entertaining, over the years we came to a subtle understanding distilled from a thousand conversations and notes and letters-to-the editors that readers were also drawing "life lessons" from those obits in humanity's eternal search for what constitutes a good and fulfilling life in the brief span we have to live it."
Please note: There is a character limit to comments. Please e-mail longer letters to krishna@obit-mag.com
Tom O'Meara was a close friend of our daughter Lara. As he neared death at the too-soon age of 44 in Santa Monica, I remembered Tom had worked for years to develop electric cars for General Motors.
As Tom’s condition grew dire, Lara went to visit him. Tom was no longer able to use his iPhone, and I wanted to help take his mind off illness, however briefly, so Lara texted for Tom. He and I chatted about the Chevy Volt, the GM electric car that was just weeks away from production. I asked if Tom had anything to do with the Volt."Tom says he was on a team that made software for it," Lara texted back.
When we got word a week later that Tom had succumbed to his cancer, I looked Tom up on LinkedIn, the workplace social network. Tom had, as usual, been modest; he had led the team that developed the Volt's computer firmware, a key element of the electric vehicle.
Tom deserved a classy obituary, I thought. I'd written a few obits in my days as reporter, and Man Dies Just Before Fruition of Life's Work on Important New Vehicle sounded to me like a story.
I e-mailed friends at the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, asking them to forward information I provided to the paper's obit desk. Neither newspaper responded. I asked the friends what happened and each forwarded more information to the obit desk. Again, the New York Times did not respond. An editor at the Los Angeles Times had the courtesy to send me this explanation:
"Thank you for submitting the material on Tom O’Meara. Just as we do with each name that is submitted to us, we sent the material you provided to our editorial library for a background check. Our library conducted its search and I'm afraid they didn't find quite enough for us to consider a news obituary. These searches involve not only past issues of the Times but a wide array of periodicals and newspapers. While there is no doubt he had a solid professional career and was an important member of the community, we didn't find the kind of material we were hoping for that would make his story news to a broader circulation."
In other words, they do a Google search, and if you're not already famous or notorious, don't expect original reporting for an obit, even at one of America's premier newspapers.
Had either newspaper done minimal reporting on the life of Tom O'Meara, it would have learned:
• Tom’s colleagues regarded him as a genius, and those who knew him best filled 79 pages on CaringBridge with get-well and condolence wishes.
• Tom was responsible for at least two patents held by GM.
• Tom recently had learned how to fly a small plane.
• Tom once bribed a guard to let him climb to the top of an Egyptian pyramid at midnight.
• • Tom was nearing completion of a master's degree in spiritual psychology.
• Tom had such a phenomenally spiritual outlook that he wrote this in one of his CaringBridge updates:
"I am not fighting cancer, I am recognizing that the tumors are a part of me. Cells that made a decision to do their own thing and stop cooperating with their neighbors. Cells that are lost, in a sense, and need love and forgiveness to rejoin the plan for the whole body. If you think about it, please send the cells of the masses love and forgiveness as well. Let them know that they are joyfully welcome back to the rest of the body. "
Tom O’Meara was deserving of an uplifting and memorable obituary. More to the point, so were readers of obits. An obit is, to be sure, a courtesy to the bereaved. In reading a published account of the heroics and losses, the trials or triumphs, and especially the redemptive experiences of a loved one, family and friends are reinforced in their knowledge that the loss was a punctuation mark on a life lived in earnest.“Obituaries matter to families, more than I realized before my personal experience with the death of a close family member,” Mary Brenzel, one of Tom’s three siblings, said.
But the journalistic reason to publish a display obituary is not to salve the losses of the survivors. Deaths are news. They are published to inform a wider audience, sometimes a much wider audience, of the conduct of admirable -- or scurrilous -- individuals whose lives were notable.
Feature or display obituaries, reported as news by journalists, certainly should be free. Newspapers long have charged funeral directors, who pass the cost along to survivors, for death notices, which can say anything and at any length. In the last half-dozen years, some newspapers have begun charging outrageous fees to publish these items, including obits written by family members who have journalistic chops. The Kansas City Star charged $500 to publish a feature-length obituary Mike Hoyt of Columbia Journalism Review wrote about his mother in 2006. And last April, Alan Mutter, who writes Reflections of a Newsosaur, blogged about having “stumbled across the problem this week when I tried to buy a death notice in my local paper, the San Francisco Chronicle, which proposed charging $450 for the one-day run of a crappy-looking, 182-word death notice.” He chose instead to give the money to a scholarship fund for his late friend’s children. I like what Steve Buttry posted online last July at The Buttry Diary: “In the long and shameful history of newspapers refusing to innovate, this might be the most shortsighted, stupid move yet.”
Indeed, a study by the Readership Institute at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University acknowledged that “space and revenue concerns led newspapers to run fewer, shorter obituaries, or shift them from a news item to a classified advertising revenue category.” But its study of obituary readership, mostly at smaller newspapers, “shows that obituaries -- along with community announcements and stories about ordinary people -- have the highest potential of all news items to grow readership.”
“A good obituary gives more than the barebones details, mere lists of beloved family and friends, funeral arrangements, etc. A meaningful obituary tells a bit of a story, gives the world a glimpse of that person who once lived a vibrant life.” Mary Brenzel said. “The stories in obituaries convey the noble, the ordinary, the great and small ways in which a person touched our lives.”
In the 1980s, the American Society of Newspaper Editors gave annual awards for two years to writers of obits in an effort to encourage improvement of the craft. The award first went to Jim Nicholson, whose profiles in the Philadelphia Daily News of a blinded World War II veteran or a woman who worked many years for Tastykake or a restaurateur whose clientele included mobsters validated his belief that “every person is a lead obit. There are no unimportant obits. There are only reporters who ask unimportant questions or bad questions.” Or, these days, no questions at all.
Nicholson also said memorably in an interview in Best Newspaper Writing 1987, a compilation of the ASNE writing awards, that what his obits were doing was “celebrating life, not death. Death is incidental to the story. If you took the phrase ‘died on Tuesday’ out of the story, it would be a feature. It would not be an obituary. It would be a human-interest feature about a hell of a nice guy or girl.”
Tom O’Meara was one of those, a hell of a nice guy. There ought to be mayors and bank robbers among those in the obit section. So should there be Tastykake workers and men whose blindness confined their life to one city block -- or software engineers whose contributions to green technology cars bear fruit just after their defeat by brutal cancers.
James M. Naughton is president emeritus of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.
Read Jim Nicholson's Response HERE
"Beyond our obituaries informing or entertaining, over the years we came to a subtle understanding distilled from a thousand conversations and notes and letters-to-the editors that readers were also drawing "life lessons" from those obits in humanity's eternal search for what constitutes a good and fulfilling life in the brief span we have to live it."
Please note: There is a character limit to comments. Please e-mail longer letters to krishna@obit-mag.com
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COMMENTS (4)
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Diane Poniatowski wrote on December 9, 2010 2:38pm
I so agree with the author and commenter Mike Foley. Obits are the ultimate and final story of "us" and we are enriched by sharing in other peoples life journeys. In fact, the only reason I read the LA Times is for the obituary section. This search for enrichment and excellent story telling is why I regularly come to Obit-Mag.com. To commenter Otis Dill, why on earth do YOU come here? Your show of disdain and real rancor is baffling. [Report Comment]
Helen Mosbrook wrote on December 4, 2010 1:54pm
It was the spirituality that killed O'Meara's chances. In the eyes of the loony left-wing lamestream press, spirituality is bad—unless you're a Muslim. [Report Comment]
Otis Dill wrote on November 30, 2010 1:15pm
You wanted him to get an obit because he, "recently had learned to fly a small plane." Embarrassing. In the age of the internet, anyone can find an amazing way to recognize people who pass away without wasting the time of one of the largest newspapers in America. They have real jobs to do... which doesn't include massaging the ego of some guy who's friend passed away. I'm not trying to be cruel here, I'm sure this was a difficult loss for his friends and family, but you're out of your mind if you think it warranted some kind of coverage in the nation's biggest newspapers. So instead of simply celebrating his life, you've cheapened it by taking your misguided rant to outlets like this. Disgusting. I'm wondering if Poynter should reconsider the title they've allowed you. [Report Comment]
Mike Foley wrote on November 29, 2010 10:41am
I couldn't agree more. The death of obits and their reincarnation as advertising is the result of continued shortsighted managements of newspapers. Obits are the ultimate local stories. [Report Comment]
