Obit Research

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.

Well, maybe it’s not an opinion, because it’s hard to take issue with obituaries that celebrate lives.

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).]