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It was a curious thing for me as a child that the first places my grandparents looked to in their morning paper were the obits and death notices. It struck me as somewhat morbid and perhaps macabre, especially as they got older and the pictures in those pages grew increasingly familiar — "Oh, I know her;" "I went to school with him." And then, when my grandmother passed in 2002, my mother and I marched into the Palm Beach Post's classified office and paid (I don't remember how much) for them to publish her obituary.
Perhaps because I'd never encountered or really thought about it before, that notion — paying for an obit — just seemed strange, as if my grandmother wasn't worthy of a couple inches of newsprint on her own merits, so we had to pay to memorialize her. Which, from a news perspective, I get; but, still … weird.
In any event, seven out of every 10 people who take the dirt nap in this country find their way into these obit pages. Many of these are then aggregated onto legacy.com, which allows you to search for your ancestors (curiously, I was able to find my grandfather's death notice —sub. req. — but not my grandmother's). Newspapers across the country are taking a few different tacks. Some are switching to paid obits; some are diligently trying to write a few words about everyone in the community who does; still others are trying to find a hybrid, all while publishers and stockholders push for — in this and every other section — more revenue, fewer expenses.
So what does the future hold for obits? Northwestern University's Medill School took up this project in a big research paper (full disclosure: my friend and former colleague, Ian Monroe, was one of the three lead authors), analyzing the trends in the obit world (after a quickie survey, you can download the 3o-page pdf here). If you knew Ian, this would seem an entirely appropriate endeavor.
Like many content categories, obituaries are being transformed by changes in audience behavior and media technology. Once just a concise piece of text reserved for the elite members of society, an obituary can now be created for anyone and can now include multimedia. Mourners can gather not just in a church or funeral home, but also on social networking sites and memorial pages that live on long after the lives that inspired them have ended. This report tracks these changes as they have evolved.
As a blog on Editor & Publisher tells it,
This being newspapers, the authors must warn the industry not to get complacent because obits can go the way of classifieds. Social networking sites, like Facebook, are fast becoming popular ways to commemorate those who have died in a much more engaging way that lasts longer than static, standard newspaper obits and death notices.
The student make the following recommendations:
- Don't cut resources devoted to obits since it can drive readership.
- Connect to social media sites with obits
- Newspapers should create their own social media sites too, allowing readers to post comments, pictures and videos of the deceased.
- Send out obit "alerts" since many people check out death notices regularly and often
(Plug: Their suggestions remind me a bit of what — as we reported in last week's cover story — local LGBT advocate Chris Bartlett is trying to do with his Gay History Wiki.)
It's an interesting report, and if you've got a few minutes, you should check it out.
[...] our report prominently. Another article on Canada.com. Oh, hey, look at this! My buddy Jeff Billman wrote it up for a blog on the Philadelphia City Paper. Here’s another article on [...]
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