Famous Last Words: Internet breathes new life into obit writing
Hyfler/Rosner
March 20, 2007 Tuesday
FAMOUS LAST WORDS Internet breathes new life into obit
writing;
SCENE | A new way of confronting death
BYLINE: JAMES A. FUSSELL, The Kansas City Star
"The short story is that the Internet happened. There were
little pockets of very good writers doing innovative things
with obituaries, and they all started talking to each other
and reading each other."
Marilyn Johnson, a graduate of Kansas City's Southeast High
School and a self-described "obit freak"
The baby boom generation changed everything it touched, from
music and movies to snack food and social protest.
Now it's doing the same for death. Today's aging boomers
have obit news groups, obit Web sites, obit blogs and
forums, even obit-writing classes so they can pen their own
send-offs before they've actually gone anywhere. There are
obit books, obit writers' conferences.
And coming soon: the launch of Obit magazine, a publication
that's dead serious about writing about the dearly departed.
What in the name of Forest Lawn is going on here?
"It's a product of the time," said Krishna Andavolu,
managing editor of Obit, set for a mid-2007 launch. "We're
looking at a moment in history where we probably have the
most educated and affluent generation of Americans we've
ever had - baby boomers - who aren't afraid to confront
something that at one time was taboo.
"In a sense they take it as an intellectual challenge."
Robert Thompson, a pop culture expert at Syracuse
University, took that a step further.
"This is just an extension of Botox and Viagra," he said.
"The oldest boomers just turned 60, and none will see 40
again. There's a sense that since this generation can't stop
chronological time, they're just redefining what it means to
be old."
Marilyn Johnson, a graduate of Kansas City's Southeast High
School and a self-described "obit freak," has her own
theory.
"The short story is that the Internet happened," she said.
"There were little pockets of very good writers doing
innovative things with obituaries, and they all started
talking to each other and reading each other."
In addition, Johnson said, newspapers started rediscovering
the advantages of assigning talented writers to pen more
significant stories of people's lives - both the famous and
the ordinary.
Johnson, who used to work for Lifemagazine, now feels more
comfortable with death. She has written obituaries for
Princess Diana, Jacqueline Onassis, Johnny Cash, Bob Hope
and Marlon Brando. She's also the author of one of the most
well-received books on obituaries - The Dead Beat: Lost
Souls, Lucky Stiffs and the Pleasures of Obituaries.
Concerning Obitmagazine?
"It's a little late to the game," she said. "But it's a
great idea, and we can't wait for it."
If you can't wait, she said, there are numerous options on
the Web. One of her favorite obit sites can be found in
Google's News Groups tab. Here's what you do. Go to Google's
main search screen and click into a category called groups.
(You can find that after clicking on the word 'more.') Then
type in alt.obituaries.
"When you press the search button you'll find a news group
in which people obsessed with obituaries from around the
world post their favorite obits and comment on them,"
Johnson said. "It's fascinating. You can find funny ones,
snarky ones, heartfelt ones. It's so great. You read stories
you will neverread anywhere else. The guy who invented the
remote control just died. We got very excited about that."
Recently she went online to read the obit of Bent Skovmand,
the inventor of what has been called the Fort Knox of seeds,
a massively fortified cavern to safeguard three million
kinds of unique crop seeds against catastrophe.
"It's being built on the island of Spitsbergen in the Arctic
Ocean," she said. "You can't make this stuff up. It's so
much fun. I know so much more now than I used to."
Johnson went to her first obit conference four years ago and
can't wait for her next one.
"I couldn't believe the stories I heard," she said. "It was
just fascinating."
Alana Baranick, award-winning obituary writer at the
Cleveland Plain Dealer and author of Life on the Death Beat:
A Handbook for Obituary Writers,said obits have changed
since she started at a smaller paper 20 years ago.
"We just took dictation from funeral directors, and that's
what we ran," she said. "Now I think management types (at
newspapers) have come to the understanding that people want
to read stories about their neighbors."
Then again, the current interest in obits could just be a
case of everything that's old is new again.
"Everything goes in waves," Baranick said. "Steve Miller,
the obits editor at the New York Sun, sent me a copy of an
obit he came across in the 1930s or '40s, and it was the
same kind of thing that we do now. It was a cleverly written
story."
Julie Tilley of Kansas City reads the obits in The Starevery
day.
"It's interesting to find out about people who've passed,"
she said. "I learn some interesting things I didn't know.
Sometimes I think it would be interesting to learn even
more.
That's what's Obit magazine is counting on.
In every issue the magazine plans to feature in-depth
profiles that probe deeply into the life of a prominent
person who has recently died, stories that go far beyond the
traditional obituary or newspaper wire story.
But that's just the start. The magazine also will
memorialize figures who have shaped our culture. Other
sections will handle issues ranging from sustainability to
the politics of death (right to life, euthanasia, etc). The
online version of the magazine - obitmag.org, which launches
at the end of this month - will let people write and submit
their own obits.
"We're even going to have a section profiling people over
the age of 80 titled 'Still Kicking Ass,' said Andavolu, the
magazine's managing editor. "It's all an avenue to good
storytelling."
What about people who think having an entire magazine
devoted to issues of death is a tad ghoulish?
"Although obits present a challenge of getting over the hump
of thinking it's all about morbidity and death, we think
it's about life," Andavolu said. "The larger narratives of
history can intertwine with our own personal narratives. So
really it's a process of introspection and an act of
celebration. It's not just about the person who's died. You
think about your own life as well."
The whole idea for readers, Andavolu said, is to help
celebrate life through lives well lived.
Celebrating life is a healthy thing to do, said Thompson,
the pop culture expert. But in doing so people must guard
against being too self-absorbed by, say, writing their own
obits.
"It's this whole 'It's-all-about-me' kind of thing,"
Thompson said. "There's nothing more self-absorbed than
writing your own obituary."
Then again, if it was good enough for Mark Twain
After the New York Journalerroneously published his obituary
before his actual death, Mark Twain retorted that the
reports of his death had been exaggerated. A press release
from Obitmagazine picks it up from there.
"He went on to write an open letter to the editors of news
magazines everywhere published in Harper'sin 1902 asking for
a copy of his standing obituaries in order to enliven what
he believed would be dry, boring accounts of his provocative
life," the release said. "We at Obitshare Twain's sense of
disbelief at the stodginess of obituary writing. While the
genre is technically writing about the dead, it need not be
dead writing."
Baranick, for one, is on board.
"I figure it's a cool thing," she said. "They have magazines
for everything else in the world. Why not this?"
DYING FOR MORE OBIT INFO? These will get you started. The
International Association of Obituaries: obitpage.com "Final
Curtain," the obituary radio show: kcrw.org/show/fe
GoodBye!: goodbyemag.com Google: groups: alt.obituaries:
groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.obituaries Obituary Forum:
obituary forum.blogspot.com Blog of Death: blogofdeath.com
Source: The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs and the
Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries by Marilyn Johnson.
marilyn...@aol.com
Hyfler/Rosner
<marilyn...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1174429921.3...@o5g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
>I SWEAR I did not say alt.obituaries was a Google group.
Hey, I run it.
Aje RavenStar
>
If you did, it didn't appear in the story. This did:
If you can't wait, she said, there are numerous options on
the Web. One of her favorite obit sites can be found in
Google's News Groups tab. Here's what you do. Go to Google's
main search screen and click into a category called groups.
(You can find that after clicking on the word 'more.') Then
type in alt.obituaries.
"When you press the search button you'll find a news group
in which people obsessed with obituaries from around the
world post their favorite obits and comment on them,"
Johnson said. "It's fascinating. You can find funny ones,
snarky ones, heartfelt ones. It's so great. You read stories
you will neverread anywhere else. The guy who invented the
remote control just died. We got very excited about that."
Which is nothing more than a simplified way for folk to find the group for
reading purposes, so no problems there. The writer of the story apparently
combined the two in the list at the bottom, but that's typical nowdays,
alas. It's pretty sad when they can't even take the time to go to
Wikipedia, do a search on newsgroups, and get a somewhat accurate distorted
history for reference purposes.
Hoodini
> The Kansas City Star
> March 20, 2007 Tuesday
> FAMOUS LAST WORDS Internet breathes new life into obit
> writing;
Address of the article:
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/living/16935064.htm
Link to the image that accompanies the article:
http://www.kansascity.com/images/kansascity/kansascitystar/news/OBITillo3_03-20-2007_BURD4M3.jpg
It shows an artistic rendition of the heads of Jimi Hendrix, Marilyn
Monroe, Jackie Onassis, and John Lennon each holding an open newspaper.
- - -
Here is the article's resource data in a much easier form to read,
and, the way it is presented on the webpage:
DYING FOR MORE OBIT INFO?
These will get you started.
•The International Association of Obituaries: obitpage.com
•“Final Curtain,” the obituary radio show: kcrw.org/show/fe
•GoodBye!: goodbyemag.com
•Google: groups: alt.obituaries:
groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.obituaries
•Obituary Forum: obituary forum.blogspot.com
•Blog of Death: blogofdeath.com
Source: The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs and the Perverse
Pleasures of Obituaries by Marilyn Johnson.
--
Gotta Find My Roogalator