A prevalent topic throughout our work the last several weeks has regarded the “featured” obit — a story of life, not death. As has been previously highlighted on this blog, The Economist applies this theme in its obituary writing, choosing to focus on the anecdotes, accomplishments and biographical details of great lives lived, as opposed to the aspects of those figures’ demise. Our research and conclusions have led us to believe that this approach is sound, and we believe it wise for publications to incorporate it.
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This past week the eight of use conducted paper prototyping and tested our ideas for Legacy’s new webpage on a few people. We drew out paper versions of the page and all the sections we want to include, and several of us marched to nearby coffee shops and academic buildings to interview people in our audience age group.
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.
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