Two newspapers did include obituary sections: The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. Examples of obituaries in these newspapers, however, only reinforce the point that obituaries don’t seem to play as big of a role in Australia’s newspaper culture.

In my opinion, the obituaries I saw in these newspapers were not particularly well written. For example, this Sydney Morning News obit of Nancy Petyarre, an aboriginal artist, was overly formulaic and kind of dry. Instead of an interesting article about this person’s life and achievements, this obit reads like a lengthy version of a death notice.

Another obit from the Age about Joseph Lester “Jody” Powell, White House Secretary under Jimmy Carter, is a bit more similar to British obituaries in its acknowledgment of controversy and scandal. For example:

“On the campaign trail he began by revealing that Carter’s net personal wealth was $US810,000 and his peanut farm was worth $US348,000 – but was soon confronted by Carter’s admission in a Playboy interview that he had committed ‘adultery in his heart many times’. Asked if such bluntness would hurt the Carter campaign, he calmly replied: ‘I can’t imagine that it would.’”

But aside from a few of those amusing glimpses into Powell’s career, the rest of the obit also sticks to the generic obit formula and it didn’t particularly hold my interest.

These obituaries definitely exhibit some influence from British obituary culture. Unfortunately they’re not nearly as interesting.

One of the main criticisms that stood out was regarding our concept of an editorial page, a potential section on Legacy.com that will include articles and editorials by a staff journalist, links to Associated Press obituaries, links to interesting obituaries from other newspapers like the New York Times and perhaps a section on who died on this day in history. It would involve mostly obituaries of prominent people, but not necessarily.

We developed this idea from the perspective that there is some journalistic value to the obituary form that needs to be pointed out. However, a problem has come to our attention that the audiences that come to Legacy.com are vastly different. Some come because they are grieving for a loved one, some come to search for someone not so close to them who died, and others come to read interesting obituaries.

Would the first two groups find such a section offensive? Two of the people we spoke to, thought so. One employee from the department of comparative literature at Northwestern University didn’t understand why this section should even be included on the site. It’s a distraction for her, because if she is there, she is visiting for a specific purpose that’s likely not to read interesting obituaries. A section on historical deaths is kind of gimmicky, she also said. Another employee from the department of geology thought that a section like this is kind of creepy, kind of like “featuring deaths” in a similar way to previews of movies in theaters.

This is only the opinion of two people, but the big issue we are faced with now is whether to maintain this section as part of the main Legacy site, or to suggest creating a new website intended entirely for a non-grieving audience interested in well-written, interesting obituaries. If we do maintain this as part of the main page, is there a differnce between featuring an article about Ted Kennedy versus Farah Fawcett for example? It’s a decision that so far hasn’t been easy to make.

A New York Times obituary of Seymour Fromer, a collector of one of the largest collections of Judaica in North America, including archives documenting the history of Jews in the American West. Kind of interesting.

IAN (CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS):

My favorite obits this week were of anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss.  He was terribly influential as a thinker, and leading proponent of structuralism.  Practically every high-quality obituary page ran something on him, and this is just one sample from the Guardian.

KATE (GEORGE NA’OPE):

This is cool article about the history of hula and one of the great hula masters, George Na’Ope.

ASHLEY (QIAN XUESEN):

I enjoyed this Wall Street Journal obituary of Qian Xuesen, a brilliant Chinese man who studied in the United States and became a leading rocket scientist, only to be forced back to China on fears that he was a spy. He went on to a distinguished career in China and received uncommon protection from Mao’s government. A quote by an anaylst, “[Xuesen] was Joe McCarthy’s present to the Chinese,” captures the irony of this interesting story.

MING (QIAN XUESEN):

Mr. Qian is one of the most respectable scientists in China and probably in the world. His contribution to modern China is far beyond words. I was really sad when I heard of his death — so did the whole nation. I found that there are several memorial pages honoring him on social networking sites after his death, on which I read even more stories about him. I read two print obituaries about him on both the Wall Street Journal and Chicago Tribune. I prefer the WSJ one because it gives more detailed information about Mr. Qian’s dramatic life, especially about how he was arrested and expelled from the States by unsubstantiated accusation and his further contribution to Chinese missile programs. It’s a dramatic, ironic and interesting story.

JAKE (LOU FILIPPO):

Lou Filippo was a renowned referee and fighter in the world of boxing who also appeared in five of the Rocky movies. Filippo, who judged 85 world championship fights, presided over the famous ‘Sugar’ Ray Leonard – ‘Marvelous’ Marvin Hagler split decision in 1987.

First, TIME Magazine had an article this week, “What Happens to Your Facebook Profile After You Die”. Apparently if a user dies and the family can submit proof like an obituary, the profile can either be removed completely or converted into a memorial. The user then won’t show up in Facebook’s suggestions, and information like status updates won’t show up in Facebook’s news feed. This came out of complaints by users who were getting suggestions to reconnect with deceased users.

I think this whole notion of what we do with deceased people in the virtual, social world is really interesting, and you might also want to check out an older TIME article on How to Manage Your Online Life When You’re Dead. In developing ideas for our project, we’ve been grappling with the notion of a similar memorial-like page to be offered by Legacy.com. We’ll have to come up with a sensitive proposal for this idea but it’s an idea that cannot be ignored given such clear online trends in that direction.

The second trend I came across occurs has to do with how we deal with our dead in real-life. For a couple of years I lived across the street from a cemetery. I’ve often wondered — don’t ask me why — if cemeteries ever run out of space. Well apparently they do. The City of London cemetery is running out of space and has found an unusual solution by offering families to reuse old graves for their loved-one.  Think about it. Would you be willing to put your loved one in a stranger’s grave? Or better yet, would you be OK with a stranger being buried in your grave 75 years after you were buried in the same spot? Pretty disturbing to think about isn’t it? But this is a real solution to a very real problem.

One cemetery has already been forced into this practice out of sustainability issues, so this most likely will be a problem for many others sooner or later. I’ve always wondered why people insist on burying loved ones when cremation is so much cleaner, so much cheaper and we don’t have to allot whole plots of land to death. One reason, I think, is a religious one. Judaism, my religion, forbids cremation all together. Sooner or later, however, as the world gets more crowded, so will the number of the dead, and we may be forced to reevaluate and change all the ways we currently deal with our dead.

Happy Halloween everyone!

According to Danica Sherrill, a Bradenton Herald employee who spoke to me about their newspaper’s obits, the newspaper publishes between ten to twenty obits a day. The numbers always increase in the winter because all the “snow birds”, that is people who like to move to warmer locations during winter, come down to Bradenton and then some of them, of course, die.

The newspaper prints short obits of 50 words or less for free and runs longer stories about the deceased for a fee. But the most interesting thing about the Bradenton Herald is that the staff doesn’t write any of the obits, neither the free nor the longer, paid versions. The families write them all. “We don’t write them, we just publish them, “ Sherill told me.

The Greenville Sun does have staff writing their obituaries. They have a person who is not a reporter whose job is to write the basic death notices each day. Longer news stories about the deceased will be written by John Jones, the obit editor or by a staff reporter assigned to the task. All their obituaries are free.

The Greenville Sun caters to a small community of 66,000 people. As a result there are many families who have lived in the community for a long time and everyone knows everyone. As a result, Jones said, they often hold other stories for a day or two if an obituary needs to run.

“We feel that there is probably nothing short of a declaration of war that a more pressing general readership interest than the obituary section of a community newspaper,” Jones said.

My impression is that each newspaper handles obits in a way that befits their particular community. These two newspapers have two very different strategies, but strategies that clearly work.

(MING): The headline caught me in the first place. It seems that all the obituaries I’ve read before were talking about someone who either had achievement in a particular field or had a very interesting. meaningful life. But someone who killed 13 of his neighbors? Never. It’s more like reading a fiction story. When I was reading the details of the story, I could even picture the scene and it really terrified me. I was thinking that the military life this man experienced must have made him very scared, hurt or something. And. very ironically, after this, his life was all about sleeping and watching TV. His entire life literally left nothing but the massacre.

(IAN): I’m a sucker for a serial killer story.  I think it comes from my love of horror movies.  This guy, Howard Unruh, was a real-life monster, and never went to jail.  He lived out his days confined in a hospital for the criminally insane after killing 13 of his neighbors for seemingly no reason at all.

ALINA (MAREK EDELMAN):

Last week I said I really like historical obits. But I think what makes this obituary of Marek Edelman unique, is not that Edelman was a holocaust survivor and not that he had participated in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and survived. Rather, that instead of immigrating to the United States or the State of Israel, Edelman was one of the few Jews who remained and lived his life in Poland. Despite all the atrocities he endured, Edelman “refused to express open hatred for the Nazis, and for years would not talk about the ghetto uprising.” Besides the particulars of Edelman’s life, the British obit style is very cheeky, for example, “his expertise was in cardiology (uninhibited by his chain-smoking). All this makes the obit a very fascinating read.

ASHLEY (ANNE MANSFIELD SULLIVAN MACY):

I immensely enjoyed this New York Times obituary of Anne Mansfield Sullivan Macy, the aide of Helen Keller who taught her to communicate through touch and allowed her to share her thoughts and feelings with the world. I had no idea that Sullivan herself had later gone blind. It was so moving to learn that Helen Keller was at Sullivan’s bedside throughout her final week of life.

KATE (SHELDON SEGAL):

Sheldon Segal is a feminist you might not know.  He was the scientist who lead the team that created Norplant and later he created Mirena.  Even though Norplant was a failed experiment, Segal did a lot to expand freedom of choice for women and pushed thinking beyond traditional monthly cycles and contraception.

JAKE (CULLENT BRYANT):

Former Los Angeles Rams running back Cullen Bryant played during the team’s super bowl run in 1980 and was physically the NFL’s largest kick returner in his era.

CHRIS (JASPER HOWARD):

Ask any coach, any player, any football personnel — current or former — and they’ll tell you the team is a family.  So needless to say, the death of star University of Connecticut cornerback Jasper Howard was the tragic loss of a brother.  Teammate and punter Desi Cullen said of Howard, an expectant father, “As Jazz looks down on us, I can promise him and his family, that son our daughter will have 105 uncles.”

TIFFANY (IGNACIO PONSETI):

Anyone who dedicates their life to curing a disease deserves a great amount of respect. And anyone who dedicates their life to curing a disease mostly found in young children in the face of adversity deserves sainthood. Dr. Ignacio Ponseti treated and found a non-surgical cure for clubfoot in infants. His developed the treatment in the 1940′s, yet doctors continued to treat clubfoot with invasive surgery. It wasn’t until the early 90′s when parents began trading information on the Web that his method became widespread.

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.

TIFFANY (NAN ROBERTSON):

As an aspiring female journalist, I cannot help but give gratitude to Nan Robertson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times who died Tuesday at the age of 83. Nan made it possible for women to be respected and treated equally in the newsroom at a time when they were regarded as second-class citizens. I don’t think there is a woman in the media who doesn’t owe a great deal to Nan Robertson and her legacy.

MING (JULES POWER):

Hey, this guy was a Northwestern alum! The obituary really caught the point of Mr. Power’s life–his achievement in Children’s programming production. The comment from George Woolery’s book tells exactly what Mr. Power helped to introduce: basic science and something more meaningful by producing programs. And I also like the quote from Mr. Power before his first broadcast.

KATE (DICKIE PETERSON):

Dickie Peterson was the lead singer of Blue Cheer, a rock and roll band that paved the way for bands like Black Sabbath.  It’s a band I really like and I think they’re even more important for making music in San Francisco in the late 60s that stood in sharp contrast to bands like the Grateful Dead.

ALINA (RICHARD SONNENFELDT):

As you may have noticed, I really like historical obits. This one is a Daily telegraph obit of Richard Sonnenfeldt, who was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany who became the principal interpreter for American prosecutors at the Nuremberg war crimes trials, helping to interrogate some of the most notorious leaders of the Third Reich. I think these kind of human stories of things that a person achieved under such difficult circumstances are fascinating. There’s so much we can learn from that.

JAKE (AL MARTINO):

Italian singer and actor Al Martino played Johnny Fontaine in The Godfather, a character many suspected to be based off of Frank Sinatra’s mafia connections. It is hard to forget Martino’s entrance in the opening sequence and his pleading with Marlon Brando to persuade a Hollywood director to hire him for a movie role. The Philadephia native also recorded several hit songs during his heyday.

IAN (PETER PINCHERA):

This one isn’t fancy, or well written, or even particluarly enlightening, but my favorite obit of the week is for Peter Pinchera, my high school AP-English teacher.  Back in 1994, he convinced me that Shakespeare was interesting, and the Bronte sisters definitely were not.  As my friend and high school classmate remarked when I mentioned that I saw this obituary, he lived a good long life.

ED: Thumbs up for the shout out to the high school English teacher.  I imagine many Medillians wouldn’t be where they are without such influences.

It surprised me greatly that someone my age, who should be used to the online world and technology by now, should prefer to do things in such a traditional way. I suppose that people born now will be much more immersed in technology as they grow up, but not all people in their early twenties are as comfortable with computers as I thought. This is something we should consider when imagining how obituaries could work better online, that some people, even young people, still prefer the traditional.

Johnson mentions how she encountered Uri Dromi, the only obituary writer in Israel, for Ha’aretz, a liberal newspaper. Dromi writes only two short stories about people who died every week. Having lived in Israel for 11 years as a child, the fact that Ha’aretz publishes even two obituaries is quite surprising to me.

Johnson wonders, “How is it possible in any country, but especially a country like Israel, crammed as it is with history and violence and eventful deaths?” This really resonated with me. When I was a child, I never saw either obituaries or death notices in newspapers. Death notices, the kind that just give generic information about the death of the person, were only placed as signs on walls around the neighborhood.

It is possible that I was so young that it never occurred to look for such a thing in the newspaper, but I have never seen longer obituaries in any Israeli media outlets, whether print or online. This is the case in spite of the fact that Israel has fought several wars over the last 60 years and there have been several suicide bombings in Haifa, the city where I lived.  Tragic as it is, there were many opportunities to write poignant stories commemorating those killed. And yet, I did a quick web search to see if Dromi’s stories are accessible online on the Ha’aretz website and I could not find any.

So, what I take away from all this is that people come from different places, have different traditions and beliefs. Although this project is geared mostly to a North American audience, we should not assume that a published story commemorating a person’s life is a self-evident concept for people. I am American, but it wasn’t for me.