A conversation with Tribune obit writer Trevor Jensen
“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.