Obit Research

We conducted a focus group yesterday to get a sense of how people feel about our new design of legacy’s Website. As an observer, here are some of my rough findings.

• Most people don’t like the brown color. They prefer something warmer and upbeat, such as orange or other welcoming colors.
• At the first glance, they couldn’t get the point of the editorial page, especially the name of “featured lives”. But when they further explored on that page, they found it valuable to read. So it seems the most important thing is how to impress the first-time user and lead them to check that page.
• Almost everyone loves the memorial page. Someone said, “It’s very warm, personal, and well-organized without any unnessary ‘flash’.” They all believe that a lof of bereaved and friends/family would like this page a lot and highly potentially pay for this service. Also, they really appreciated the virtual candle idea.

I always find it’s interesting to explore the different writing styles across countries. When I first got the assignment of obituaries in Wales, I expected it to be more or less influenced by British ones, probably due to the geographic reason.  But when I deep look at them, it seems I’m wrong. I tried to come to a conclusion about how obituaries in Wales look like in general. The result was I couldn’t. Different papers seem have different tastes.

Here’s a national paper South Wales Echo, whose obituaries seem more like resumes to me. I’ll show you an example.

Obituary: Emyr Currie-Jones

Dec 2 2008 by Catherine Mary Evans, South Wales Echo

EMYR CURRIE-JONES was one of the most worthy and estimable figures in local government, especially in educational affairs in Cardiff and Glamorgan, during the past half century.

He figured prominently in the resolution of several highly controversial issues during that period.

He was also the first chairman of the newly-created South Glamorgan County Council, serving from 1973 to 1975, and a member for the city’s Ely ward from 1981 to 1989.

Mr Currie-Jones, beloved husband of the late Mary, was born in Caernarfon and became a well-known and highly respected solicitor in Cardiff.

He acted as prosecuting solicitor for the Cardiff City Council from 1950 to 1955 and subsequently as partner in the practice of Rees, Currie-Jones, Davies and Evans in the Castle Arcade Chambers North until his retirement in 1987, later as consultant solicitor.

He was a past president of the Cardiff and District Law Society and a member of numerous councils and committees including the Welsh Joint Education Committee and Welsh Language Council.

For more than 20 years, Mr Currie-Jones was also a member of the Council of the then University College of Cardiff.

A fluent Welsh speaker, he had been involved in the affairs of his chapel at Minny Street, devoting many years to the chapel as its secretary.

He also served as a member of the Council of the Welsh Congregational Churches.

He was a past member of the Courts of Governors of the University Colleges of Swansea, the Council of the Welsh National School of Medicine, the Court of the National Library of Wales and the Welsh Books Council.

He also served for years on the Council of the Royal National Eisteddfod of Wales and was the chairman of the executive committee of the National Eisteddfod when it was held in Cardiff in 1978.

He received a warm welcome when he attended some of the sessions of the Eisteddfod held in Pontcanna this year.

Mr Currie-Jones was awarded the CBE for his work in local government in 1976. He died on October 13.

Read more…

My favorite obituary of this week was the one about Mr. Qian Xuesen’s death. As one of the most respectable scientists in China and probably in the world, I feel that his death was a great loss to China and human history. Mr. Qian lived a very dramatic life. He was educated in the States, but was also arrested for a reason that has never been proved. Finally, he went back to China and started to dedicate to China’s aviation industry.

I was really sad when I heard of his death and I read almost every obituary in all of the major newspapers.

• AP: Father of China’s Space Tech Program Dies at 98
• WSJ: Trained in the U.S., Scientist Became China’s ‘Rocket King’
• NYT: Qian Xuesen, Father of China’s Space Program, Dies at 98
• LA Times: Qian Xuesen dies at 98; rocket scientist helped establish Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• New Yorker: The Two Lives of Qian Xuesen
• Chicago Tribune: Father of Chinese missile programs
• Xinhua: China’s “father of space technology” dies at 98

Among all of them, I like the New York Times one and the Wall Street Journal one more than the others, because I found they provided more interesting detail information about Mr. Qian’s life both in the States and in China.

Read more…

Our research team brainstormed about what has changed in the world of obituaries yesterday. One consensus was the obituaries of the past were mostly about the facts of death, but it’s more about the facts of life today.

It recalled something I read from the research readings. That article was “The Changing Presentation of Death in the Obituary, 1899-1999″, which roughly analyzes the changing concept of obituaries in history.

Read more…

For this project, I’ve been reading this book—The World of Obituaries. One thing, if not more, that interested me a lot was the difference between American obituaries and obituaries in other cultural environments.

The first discussion was about the term “obituary”. The author says that some English-language newspapers reserve the term “obituary” for staff-written obituaries and use such terms as “death notices,” “death announcements,” and the like for family-written ones. But Arabic and Persian-language newspapers do not make such a linguistic distinction but restrict the obituary pages to the family-written type and consider staff-written obituaries to be news items published in other pages of the newspaper in accordance with the importance of the deceased. That means, when famous people like presidents or major figures die, their deaths were usually reported as a news item on the front page, whereas less prominent people get written up in other pages. But when I did the interviews with staff writers with American newspapers, they told me that no matter whether the person was well-known or just an “average” person, as long as his/her life story was interesting, they would definitely choose this person to do a news obituary rather than just to put a death notice somewhere.

Read more…

“I enjoy my job very much,” Trevor Jensen told me with a pleasant smile. Like most of the other obituary writers, he is also enjoying learning about people and writing them into decent stories. “There’s never been a day when I came to work, saying, ‘Oh man, what I’m gonna work on today?’ It’s a job where there’s always a story.”

Having served as the Tribune’s chief obituary writer for three and a half years, Jensen writes about seven stories a week among the total 15 to 20 staff produced obituaries.

“We certainly have an editor at my desk, but I’m pretty self-contained,” Jensen told me that he finds stories mostly by himself, sometimes getting suggestions from families, friends, colleagues and funeral homes.

“I sit down each day and go through the deck of submissions of death notices in the area and sources I have, trying to find the most interesting stories,” he said.

Read more…

When you think of an obituary, what comes to mind?

Death? Sad news? Someone passed away?

Hmm, these are probably the answers of most young people of our generation. But Laura Palencia has a different one.

“The last page of the Economist comes to mind, because I read its obits at the end of the magazine,” she was sitting at a Starbucks, telling me her experience as an Economist obits fan.

Did you remember where you read Ted Kennedy’s obituary? Google news? Palencia got it from the Economist. She even kept looking for Michael Jackson’s for a while.

“It seems they never published it. Then I just read it online on one of the Google news link.”

For some reason, Palencia didn’t find the obituary of Michael Jackson on the Economist. Actually they did one. But still, she surprised me by doing so because I never met someone of my age was so into obituaries, which I even didn’t realize that they exist on newspapers since I knew there was a thing called “newspaper” and there was another thing called “obituary”.

Palencia has her reasons.

“I like reading it to get the perspective of a post-life and the analysis of how this person’s life really meant.”

She told me it’s far more different to write people when they’re still alive than looking back into their life after death, which makes the obituaries seem interesting.

“But I like my news to have a story,” she said.

Well, a very interesting question actually arises from her response here—should obituaries be told in a straight or interpreted way?

Palencia believes that the Economist is doing the latter, which is an essential reason for her to read it.

“Some people think news shouldn’t have an opinion, and a news story should just focus on the facts,” she said. “I preferred an interpreted obituary than just a fact, because I find that a lot more interesting.”

Palencia told me she thought it depends on how a person judges news. Specifically referring to the obits on the Economist, she considers them as stories with writers’ interpretation, which not only tells about what happened but what we could think of it and get out of it.

Then I asked myself, what I would prefer if I read obituaries? I think my answer would be exactly the same. An editorial obituary sounds more appealing than one just of facts, doesn’t it? But you may have a different thought. Why not sharing with us?

Another interesting thing that Palencia bought up was her thinking of oneself to write an obituary blurb before one passed away. And the writer who writes this person’s obituary may use it as reference, to see how this person judging his own life.

“It might sound weird, but it would be kind of interesting,” she said.

When I saw Alina’s post, I thought “Wow, what a coincidence!” because I was also thinking of posting something about my experience with obituaries in a foreign country, specifically, my country.

I remembered it was a news writing class last fall when I was assigned to write an obituary the first time, I thought, “How interesting! Obituary is a news category in the States and they even have an actual section of obituaries in print media!” It just never happened in China unless the deceased one is a well-known.

It doesn’t mean there isn’t any obituary of an ordinary person in China. It just never goes to media outlets. A common way for almost all the families and friends to memorialize someone is to have a physical memorial meeting at a funeral home, where all the related ones could gather to mourn the person’s death, with flowers, wreath or donations in some cases. As part of that meeting, a family member or friend may read to the public a person’s obituary, which tells the life story of him/her.

But that’s all. If you’re not related to the deceased or there is no close connection, it’s highly likely that you may never notice this person has passed away or happened to know it years after.

For younger generation, I remembered that it was popular to memorialize the ones who passed away at a very young age by creating a Webpage when I was in college. There were more such specialized Websites than today because it seems people would be more willing to do this on social networking sites nowadays, after renren.com, a Chinese Facebook, or such types of Websites emerged. However, nothing as an obituary comes along on the site. It functions more like a guestbook, where you can post comments, video or pictures of the loved one.

But when it comes to a celebrity, it’s huge for Chinese audience. Here’s an example of a very famous Chinese Anchor who passed away recently.

To help you know this person, it might be better to read this death notice first. (I didn’t find the obituary of him in English.)

Not surprisingly, the state-run Xinhua News Agency did a news package for his death, including his obituary, how people memorialized him, pictures and videos…Basically, everything related.

Personally, people also write blogs about their feelings of this anchor’s death. Some of them even function as an obituary based on their knowledge of this anchor’s life, like this.

So this is a general picture of obituaries in China, where people don’t feel it’s necessary to put obituaries on media since there isn’t a relationship between the deceased and the rest of the world. But referring to the well-known, even though there isn’t a direct relationship, it’s kind of an indirect one that people share a common knowledge of and can chat about.