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| Old-school journalists at work New York Times News Room circa 1949–Source: Wikipedia |
By Jim
Heffernan
I
heard still another journalist disparage obituary writing the other day on the
radio. I say “another journalist” because that’s what they always do when they
go on to bigger and better things in newspaper work.
“Yeah,
I got stuck writing obits at the Dry Socket, Montana, Clarion when I first
started out,” they say after winning the Pulitzer Prize several years later.
Obituary
writing is to journalism what carrying a pail and shovel behind the elephants
in a circus parade is to show business, in the minds of most journalists.
I
“got stuck” writing obits when I started out writing for the Duluth daily
newspapers, but I seldom minded. I often enjoyed it when someone of note or had
led an interesting life passed on to his or her reward.
No
one person did all of the obits when I was a young reporter. Everyone on the
staff got involved, usually when switchboard operators or city editors directed
morticians’ calls to staffers who were not otherwise occupied. In those ancient
times, a half-century ago, most obituaries were dictated by undertakers to
reporters over the telephone.
And
while others grumbled when they got stuck, I didn’t mind. It was a bit of a
challenge to turn the obituary of an ordinary person into something a little
special, hopefully notable. The morticians just gathered the facts from family
members; it was up to us to turn the material into readable prose.
I
have written obituaries for local luminaries, civic leaders, movers and
shakers, politicians, shady characters and hundreds of regular folks whose only
mention in the newspaper in their entire lives was their obit. And, yes, I have
written them for friends and relatives.
All
of this took place for me long before the newspaper began charging for
obituaries, as it does today. Obits are now considered the same as advertising
so that what appears is written by families or undertakers forwarding the words
of survivors to non-journalists. Thus, in some current obits you read that
certain decedents have already been accepted into heaven where they have been
reunited with loved ones who have gone before, and so forth. Angels are often
involved.
Does
anybody get sent in the other direction? Not in the obituaries.
This
sort of hyperbole was not allowed when the news department wrote the obits. We
had certain rules about how they should be written, including information on
the person’s educational background, career, organization memberships,
religious affiliations and military service, together with immediate survivors.
Often there was room to word them in such a way that the most ordinary person
seemed at least somewhat special, if for no other reason than longevity.
You
can say what you want however you want to say it today when paying for the obit
of a family member, but I think the more formal journalistic way was better –
more respectful (but not as profitable). Do you really want your “flour-legged
friends Rover and Fido” as survivors in the final accounting of your life?
I
haven’t done it yet, but I think I have one more journalistic obituary left in
me. My own. I’ll get to it one of these days.
