PRESS RELEASE
Nov 30, 2009
7:00 a.m., CDT

– FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE –

To better understand the nature of our project and the role of Legacy.com in today’s obituary publishing industry, the Fall 2009 Interactive Innovation Project team at the Medill School of Journalism has been diligently researching the history and trends of American obituary writing. We have summarized our findings in a report that we have released this morning. In this report, we examine the nature of the contemporary American obituary, a phenomenon that constitutes an important content category for modern newspapers – and, increasingly, for publishers in other media.

Like many content categories, obituaries are being transformed by changes in audience behavior and media technology. Once just a concise piece of text reserved for the elite members of society, an obituary can now be created for anyone and can now include multimedia. Mourners can gather not just in a church or funeral home, but also on social networking sites and memorial pages that live on long after the lives that inspired them have ended. This report tracks these changes as they have evolved.

We would like to thank Ian, Ming and Ashley as the principal writers and researchers of the report.

Read report: “The State of the American Obituary”

– END RELEASE –

About the Interactive Innovation Project team

Meet the Interactive Innovation Project team

Bear with me for a moment and check out the beginning portion of a potential feature on former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, revolutionary for his use of policy analysis in his post and controversial for his role in the Vietnam War:

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“At 5:15 one afternoon last week,” TIME wrote on Nov 12, 1965, “Norman Morrison, 31, his clothing doused in kerosene and his youngest child, 18-month-old Emily, cradled in his arms, stood outside the river entrance to the Pentagon and burned himself to death.”

He was a war protester, this Morrison.  This was the unraveling of the public debate, from marching to self-immolation.  This was the polarization that, no matter his intention, Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, contributed to an increasingly fractured public during America’s most divisive war, clouding a unique résumé that made him one of the most fascinating men to hold the post.

McNamara’s managerial and analytical brilliance was indisputable.  As the eventual star of the “Whiz Kids”, a group of post-World War II ex-military that ascended Ford Motor Company’s executive ladder and righted the ship, he displayed a first-class aptitude for organizational capability, becoming the corporation’s president in 1960.  Although the Kennedy administration soon targeted him to head the Department of the Treasury, McNamara, despite his lack of military command, was recommended by Truman’s Secretary of Defense, Robert A. Lovett, for the same post.

“Mr. President, it’s absurd.  I’m not qualified,” McNamara humbly told Kennedy.   ”Look, Bob,” the president replied, “I don’t think there’s any school for Presidents either.”

McNamara was a rare figure in the administration—one of the few men who had John Kennedy’s ear in matters of national security, initially evidenced by his involvement in the backroom dealings of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  As such, his role as a policymaker was legitimized, leading him to cut waste, carve out a more efficient department and establish new guidelines for nuclear warfare.  In fact, it was McNamara who first clarified the once prevalent concept of “mutual assured destruction” (MAD).

However, his name would forever be etched in controversy for his authority in the planning and execution of the Vietnam War, colloquially known by many as “McNamara’s War”—blame that would trouble him in the years following his service.

…

What about it?  Are we on point in assessing that this is the type of story the obituary reader, whether intense or more fleeting in her interests, wants to read?

(John Thadeus Delane, courtesy of Wikipedia commons)

Kate and I had a brief, affable back and forth during discussion last week about the historical tone of obituaries — i.e., “Was the content presented directly and concisely or expressively and at length?”

Research has shown that obits have been on a creative upswing since their inception at the dawn of the printing press, beginning as short [death] notices and transforming into storytelling tools a few hundred years afterward.  Pinning down where and when this revolution took place was a much easier task than expected, and there was one particular man to thank.

A Google Archive search of the obituary’s history, though surely imperfect and hardly scientific, reveals a timeline increasingly populated by the mid- to late-1800s.  Per a bit of research, there was a name in journalism that, not coincidentally, was prevalent in regards to obit writing during that period: John Thadeus Delane, editor of The Times of London from 1841-77.

In 2007, The newspaper company’s publishing arm released Great Victorian Lives – An Era in Obituaries, a collection of some of the paper’s highest profile obits of the 1800s, and the paper’s preview singles out Delane’s contributions to obituary writing:

“… under the 36-year editorship of John Thadeus Delane (1841-77) the paper began to respond to the deaths of significant national and international figures in a style – and on a scale – that none of its rivals could match. The death of [the Duke of] Wellington, Delane told his deputy, “will be the only topic”.

For the sake of contrast, notice how the New York Times handled its front page coverage of President Lincoln’s assassination with nary an expressive word, and how that starkly differed from this, which appeared in Delane’s paper:

“The estimates of his character and of the calibre of his intellect since he was suddenly tossed to the surface of a great nation have been numerous and contradictory; but the opinion seems to be daily gaining ground that impartial history will assign to him one of the highest places among the statesmen who have hitherto presided over the North in the supreme agony of the nation.”

Ann Wroe would be proud.

I enjoyed this very local obituary in the Sacramento Bee about a 59-year-old community activist named Mary Brill. It’s a touching tribute to a woman who suffered multiple scelrosis, a brain tumor and other health ailments, yet remained a powerful and engaged advocate for local issues. It’s also interesting that the Sacramento Bee is not served by Legacy.com, that a fair number of people commented on the obituary, and that Ms. Brill was a single, unmarried woman.

ALINA (INDIRA GHANDI):

This is an old obit from 1984 of Indira Ghandi that was featured on the New York Times website for obits of people who died on this day in history. This obit of the Indian leader is not much like an obit at all. First of all it’s very long and it’s more like a long feature article with a headline and section breaks. I think this is a good example of the kind of reporting that can be done around people who have died, especially prominent ones.

MING (WERNER WOLFGANG HEUBECK):

I feel I’m getting more and more into British obituaries, which are written in a very comic and sarcastic tone. Like this one, a story about a bus manager who fought for Nazi Germany and received a CBE 40 years after from the hands of the Queen. Here’s the words: “‘Her Majesty said that I must have an interesting job,’ he recalled in his gruff Bavarian accent. ‘I told her that sometimes it got too damn interesting.’”

CHRIS (SHILOH PEPIN)

Shiloh Pepin was expected to live for only days, but fought for years until her passing last Friday.  She was born with ‘Mermaid Syndrome’, properly known as Sirenomelia, a condition defined by the fusion of the legs upon birth.  It occurs in only 1 out of  every 100,000 live births, making Shiloh’s story rare — even rarer because of her endurance.  She attracted the attention of a worldwide audience, landing a recent appearance on Oprah.  She was 10 years old.

JAKE (RAY BROWNE):

Ray Browne, a former professor at Bowling Green State University, was a pioneer in the study of popular culture and championed its societal significance. Some people credit him with coining the term ‘popular culture,’ as it is rumored that he started using the phrase in the late 60s.

TIFFANY (MICHAEL MILBRATH)

When the swine flu scare invaded Chicago, one of our journalism professors advised us to jump on this story, because it was going to be a big one. After reading Michael Milbrath’s obituary, I’m glad I didn’t take my professor’s advice.

KATE (Amos Ferguson)

I liked this obituary because Amos Ferguson was so important to Bahamian culture, but someone we, as Americans, probably haven’t heard of.

Still, it’s easy to see how political ideology could seep into an obituary of, well, anyone involved in politics, any celebrity with a political opinion, or, in the case of Kurt Vonnegut, a figure who represented a galvanized faction of agitated Americans during a time of great social turmoil.

Fox News, for example — perhaps unbiased in its news coverage but unabashedly conservative in its editorial tone — took aim at Vonnegut in an obituary aired on Special Report with Brit Hume.  YouTube user LiberalViewer criticized the network for including such phrases as “left-wing screeds” and “despondent leftism” when describing Vonnegut’s work, and for closing its story with this perceived uppercut: “Vonnegut, who failed at suicide 23 years ago, said 34 years ago that he hoped his children wouldn’t say of him when he was gone, ‘He made wonderful jokes, but he was such an unhappy man.  So I’ll say it for them.’”

But do we chalk up the inclusion of such words to bias or mere observation?  Vonnegut was, after all, well left of the political center, and his frustration with life was well documented.  The New York Times — perhaps unbiased in its news coverage but unabashedly liberal in its editorial tone — noted those things in its obituary, as well, commenting on his “profound pessimism” and his frazzled appearance:

With his curly hair askew, deep pouches under his eyes and rumpled clothes, he often looked like an out-of-work philosophy professor, typically chain smoking, his conversation punctuated with coughs and wheezes.

And if Fox ended its obituary with an unnecessary jab, the Times pulled no punches, itself:

His last book, in 2005, was a collection of biographical essays, “A Man Without a Country.” It, too, was a best seller.

In concludes with a poem written by Mr. Vonnegut called “Requiem,” which has these closing lines:

When the last living thing

has died on account of us,

how poetical it would be

if Earth could say,

in a voice floating up

perhaps

from the floor

of the Grand Canyon,

“It is done.”

People did not like it here.

Indubitably, that’s quite the written bookend to Vonnegut’s grief.

What do you think?  Did Fox give Kurt Vonnegut an unfair rap in its obituary of him or was the network doing as the Times did, observing the author’s defiant politics and mental struggles?  Moreover, what do you think about the ideologies of news outlets making their way into obituaries?  Is it a passable practice that highlights diversity of opinion about important figures in world history or should obituaries strictly adhere to “not speaking evil of the dead”?

What makes The Economist’s approach so unique — and laudable — is that, as editor Ann Wroe puts it, a chronological retelling of a person’s existence is, well, boring.  In short, it doesn’t do life justice.

During an October 2008 New York Public Library panel discussion (embedded video at bottom), she said:

“I think you do have to hone in on certain points in [life].  There will be one or two incidents that will really illuminate the whole thing.  I think it was Virginia Woolf who said that it might be possible to write a whole life out of one tiny incident — maybe even just two minutes — and I think that might be true.”

Take, for instance, the magazine’s obituary of Norman Borlaug, who died in September.  It didn’t begin by listing his day and place of birth, nor did it dive into details of his upbringing and education.  No, instead, it began to tell a story.

“AS DAWN broke over northern Mexico, Norman Borlaug wriggled from his sleeping bag. Rats had run over him all night, and he was cold. In a corner of the dilapidated research station where he had tried to sleep, he found a rusting plough. He took it outside, strapped the harness to himself, and began, furiously and crazily, in front of a group of astonished peasants, to plough the land.”

Hook. Line. Sinker.

Here’s the man’s commemoration: an anecdote about the time he defiantly pushed a plough through a third-world field, a metaphor for his commitment to becoming a “feeder of the world”.

Obituaries are opportunities to do more than recall facts, and the realization makes The Economist stand out.  Whether that mode of storytelling will transition to the Web as journalism makes its shift remains to be seen.  But this project will certainly look for clues that may hint at an answer.

[Note: The panel discussion is entitled "DEAD from the NYPL: The Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries", and the entire video is worth a watch (Ms. Wroe's contributions begin somewhere around the 1:15 mark).]