Young people don’t seem too keen on ‘obituary’
In two interviews I conducted with men in their mid-20s, both subjects emphatically answered “DEATH” when asked what comes to mind when thinking of obituaries. One of them, a particularly well-educated PHD student at THE Northwestern University, even went as far as saying that perhaps our research team should think about changing the name of these life stories to something not quite as synonymous with morbidity. He suggested to play off of the term ‘legacy,’ which isn’t as somber vocabulary and relates more to the life of a person as opposed to the death.
Is it possible that such drastic changes are needed to entice America’s young generation to pay closer attention to today’s obituary culture? As a mid-20s male myself, I sometimes find it hard to pick up a newspaper or visit a Web site and spend a lot of time perusing the obituaries section. At my age, I don’t always want to think about the end, especially before the middle or even the beginning have truly commenced.
Maybe changing the actual term is taking it a little too far, but it seems as though altering the stigma could mean gains in young adult readership. The first logical step is to continue to transform the obituary, and even the death notice, into more of a story as opposed to an announcement.
I agree with you completely, Jake. I’ve heard so many journalism professors (and others) refer to the obituary as telling the story of a life, but I’m not sure the current form reflects that as well as it could. It’s one of the few sections where you can truly read and write about almost all the other sections, you’ll cover politicians, entertainers, athletes, religious figures, etc.
Not sure if you all are looking into this, (although I bet you are) but I think video could help a lot, as really showing someone as they were when alive, and representing them for what they did or the values they practiced during the time they were actually here.