Obit Research

“’I don’t how anyone did this job before Internet existed?’ … I can tell you how they did because I’ve been around”, said Patricia Sullivan, a Washington Post obituary writer and contributor to Post’s Post Mortem blog.

The internet revolutionized obituary writing like it did most other kinds of journalism. Before writers had to go to the library, Sullivan explained, and sift through phone books and archives. Now you can find phone numbers with a couple of keystrokes.

Last Sunday, Tiffany wrote about an entry from the Washington Post’s Post Mortem blog. Sullivan has been a Post obituary writer for the past six years. She and her colleagues started Post Mortem two years ago.

I began my interview with Sullivan with a question about the Posts’ obituary readership. “From all evidence we have it’s increasing pretty significantly,” Sullivan told me, listing the reasons on the growing popularity of obituaries in general and that the Post always tries to make obituaries more interesting and more stories of people’s lives.

Baby boomers are aging, Sullivan also told me, and suddenly they are reading obituaries. This past summer there have been many deaths of people who were really well known when baby boomers were young.

“When your childhood idols die, you pay attention, or your peers die, you pay attention too,” she said.

The Post’s obituary department writes about those important and well-known, but also about those who have lived in the community a significant amount of time. “Balancing that mission has always been an art form,” Sullivan said.

The purpose of the “Post Mortem” blog, Sullivan said, is to engage with readers and give them a sense of what’s out there, give them a behind the scene look at how obituary writers do their jobs.

The Post is actually in the process of redesigning their obituary blog as well as obituary website. They are looking to bring in more content, Sullivan said, which is a constant challenge in a busy newsroom. They want to improve user interactivity, which means beyond the current comments section and underused discussion forum. They want to include more photos and more original video and audio.

“This is like blog 1.0 and we’re now moving to blog 2.0, and I can see down the road about the 3.0 that we need to get to,” Sullivan said.

The Post’s obituary writing process is simple: For the basic obituary, the family sends the newspaper basic information. The writers call the family back and ask follow up questions. They search files, sometimes interview other people, and fact check as much as possible. For an obituary of a major person in the community, the writers talk to the family, ask questions only the family can answer such as the cause of death (the Post always states the medical cause of death), names of survivors and where they live and previous marriages (the Post always includes previous marriages). The writers also conduct rigorous interviews with a family member, they search archives and interview other people who knew the deceased and can provide context. Then they are ready to write the story.

“There’s always selection, always news judgment going on, and that’s what it comes down to, news judgment,” Sullivan said.

The criteria are simple: The person had to die within 30 days; the family has to answer all the questions and the person needs to have lived and been engaged in the Washington community for 20 continuous years. “And still with that we get 300 obits a month,” Sullivan said.

There isn’t as much criteria for the blog, Sullivan said, just whatever the writers think might be interesting to readers. They post their “daily goodbye” so there’s something new every day. “I get up in the morning in my pajamas and do it early from home so we can post it early,” she said.

I also asked Sullivan to compare the Post’s obituary writing style with the style of British newspapers. The British give outright opinions and write with a lot of attitude, Sullivan said. This kind of thing just doesn’t work in the US.

“I think it has to do with English and American sensibility because people in America treat death and obituaries differently,” she said. The English obituaries really are a delight to read but American readers are appalled. They don’t want to read that.