An obituary ( obit for short) is an article about a recently deceased person. [1] Newspapers often publish obituaries as news articles. Although obituaries tend to focus on positive aspects of the subject's life, this is not always the case. [2] According to Nigel Farndale, the Obituaries Editor of The Times , obituaries ought to be "balanced accounts" written in a "deadpan" style, and should not read like a hagiography. [3]
In local newspapers, an obituary may be published for any local resident upon death. A necrology is a register or list of records of the deaths of people related to a particular organization, group or field, which may only contain the sparsest details, or small obituaries. Historical necrologies can be important sources of information.
Two types of paid advertisements are related to obituaries. One, known as a death notice, usually appears in the Births, Marriages and Deaths (BMD) section of a paper and omits most biographical details and may be a legally required public notice under some circumstances. The other type, a paid memorial advertisement, is usually written by family members or friends, perhaps with assistance from a funeral home. [1] Both types of paid advertisements are usually run as classified advertisements.
The word also applies to the entire program and the part of that program describing the life of the deceased. It is given to those who attend their service. The verso page heading may be Obituary or Reflections, the recto heading is usually Order of Service.
A premature obituary is a false reporting of the death of a person who is still alive. It may occur due to unexpected survival of someone who was close to death. Other reasons for such publication might be miscommunication between newspapers, family members, and the funeral home, often resulting in embarrassment for everyone involved.
In November 2020, Radio France Internationale accidentally published about 100 prewritten obituaries for celebrities such as Queen Elizabeth II and Clint Eastwood. The premature publication was blamed on a transition to a new content management system. [4]
Irish author Brendan Behan said, "there is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary." In this regard, some people seek to have an unsuspecting newspaper editor publish a premature death notice or obituary as a malicious hoax, perhaps to gain revenge on the "deceased". To that end, nearly all newspapers now have policies requiring that death notices come from a reliable source (such as a funeral home), though even this has not stopped some pranksters such as Alan Abel. [5]
Many news organizations maintain prewritten (or preedited video) obituaries on file for notable individuals who are still living, in order to promptly publish detailed, authoritative, and lengthy obituaries upon their deaths. These are also known as "advance" obituaries. [4] The Los Angeles Times' obituary of Elizabeth Taylor, for example, was written in 1999 after three months of research, then often updated before the actress' 2011 death. [6] Quite often the prewritten obituary's subject outlives its author. One example is The New York Times' obituary of Taylor, written by the newspaper's theater critic Mel Gussow, who died in 2005. [7] The 2023 obituary of Henry Kissinger featured reporting by Michael T. Kaufman, who died almost 14 years earlier in 2010. [8]
Writing in 2021, Paul Farhi of The Washington Post observed that while once a "sleepy corner of journalism", publications in the Internet age have invested more resources in preparing advance obituaries for rapid publication online, in order to meet widespread public interest; obituaries can attract millions of readers online within days of their subjects' deaths. [9] The New York Times maintains a "deep reservoir" of advance obituaries, estimated to stand at roughly 1,850 as of 2021 [update] . [9] [10] The paper often interviews notables specifically for their obituaries, a practice begun by Alden Whitman in 1966. [10] As of 2021 [update] , The Washington Post has about 900 advance obituaries on file, and entertainment publication The Hollywood Reporter has prepared 800 advances for notable figures in the film and television industry. [9]
An advance obituary is usually not written until the subject has reached old age, as the earlier a profile is written, the more additions and revisions it will likely require. [11] Former New York Times obituary writer Margalit Fox wrote that "as a general rule, when lives are long enough, accomplished enough and complex enough that we would just as soon not get caught short writing them on deadline, advances are assigned". [12] Consequently, many public figures who die unexpectedly or prematurely will have no obituary available at a given publication, and journalists will be left to research and write lengthy articles on short notice. [9] [10] However, Farhi noted that advance obituaries of younger people will occasionally be prepared if they are known to have health problems or "chaotic lives"; The Washington Post had an advance obituary for singer Amy Winehouse, whose struggles with substance abuse were widely chronicled before her death at age 27. [9] In another case, Nigel Farndale, an obituaries editor for The Times , said that in April 2020, when news broke that then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was in an intensive care unit with COVID-19 during the pandemic, he was under considerable pressure to quickly prepare an obituary that could be immediately published if Johnson died from the disease. [11]
Still, for particularly major figures, advance obituaries may be drafted early in their lives and revised constantly throughout the following years or decades. Bill McDonald, obituaries editor of The New York Times, estimated in 2016 that Fidel Castro's obituary "cost us more man/woman hours over the years than any piece we've ever run". Work on it began in 1959, and it went through many subsequent iterations. Well into the 21st century, the visual layout for the obituary was substantially modified to match changes in the paper's page size, and a presentation for its digital edition cycled through different slideshow and video formats to match advances in Internet download speeds. [13] The newspaper began drafting an obituary for Queen Elizabeth II when she was still heir apparent, and it was rewritten in its entirety multiple times until her death in 2022. [14]
Obituaries are a notable feature of The Economist , which publishes one full-page obituary per week, reflecting on the subject's life and influence on world history. Past subjects have ranged from Ray Charles to Uday Hussein to George Floyd. [15]
The Times and the Daily Telegraph publish anthologies of obituaries under a common theme, such as military obituaries, sports obituaries, heroes and adventurers, entertainers, rogues, eccentric lives, etc.
The British Medical Journal encourages doctors to write their own obituaries for publication after their death.[ citation needed ]
For numerous summer seasons, CBC Radio One has run The Late Show , a radio documentary series which presents extended obituaries of interesting Canadians.
Lady Antonia Margaret Caroline Fraser, is a British author of history, novels, biographies and detective fiction. She is the widow of the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Harold Pinter (1930–2008), and prior to his death was also known as Lady Antonia Pinter.
An advertorial is an advertisement in the form of editorial content. The term "advertorial" is a blend of the words "advertisement" and "editorial." Merriam-Webster dates the origin of the word to 1946.
A weekly newspaper is a general-news or current affairs publication that is issued once or twice a week in a wide variety broadsheet, magazine, and digital formats. Similarly, a biweekly newspaper is published once every two weeks. Weekly newspapers tend to have smaller circulations than daily newspapers, and often cover smaller territories, such as one or more smaller towns, a rural county, or a few neighborhoods in a large city. Frequently, weeklies cover local news and engage in community journalism.
Neil Steinberg is an American news columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and an author. He joined the paper's staff in 1987.
Current Biography is an American monthly magazine published by the H. W. Wilson Company of New York City, a publisher of reference books, that appears every month except December. Current Biography contains profiles of people in the news and includes politicians, athletes, businessmen, and entertainers. Published since 1940, the articles are annually collected into bound volumes called Current Biography Yearbook. A December issue of the magazine is not published because the staff works on the final cumulative volume for the year. Articles in the bound volumes correct any mistakes that may have appeared in the magazine and may include additional relevant information about the subject that became available since publication of the original article. The work is a standard reference source in American libraries, and the publisher keeps in print the older volumes. Wilson also issues cumulative indexes to the set, and an online version is available as a subscription database.
Alden Rogers Whitman was an American journalist who served as chief obituary writer for The New York Times from 1964 to 1976. In that role, he pioneered a more vivid, biographical approach to obituaries, some based on interviews with his subjects in advance of their deaths. Whitman was also the target of a McCarthy-era investigation into communists in the press. Under questioning by the United States Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security in 1956, he acknowledged his affiliation with the Communist Party USA but refused to name other party members. The ensuing eight-year legal battle over contempt of Congress ended with all charges dismissed.
Nigel Farndale is a British author and journalist, known for his broadsheet interviews and his bestselling novel The Blasphemer.
Carl Alanson Whitaker (1912–1995) was an American physician and psychotherapy pioneer family therapist.
Elite advertisements in Nigeria are various forms of personal-leaning print, audio and visual advertisements sponsored by Nigerian social elites to celebrate the achievements of a deceased acquaintance or to congratulate a colleague, family or friend.
Hugh John Massingberd, originally Hugh John Montgomery and known from 1963 to 1992 as Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd, was an English journalist and genealogist. He was chief editor of Burke's Peerage/Burke's Landed Gentry from 1971 to 1983.
Torrey Botanical Society was started in the 1860s by colleagues of John Torrey. It is the oldest botanical society in the Americas. The Society promotes the exploration and study of plant life, with particular focus on the flora of the regions surrounding New York City. Members of the group including Nathaniel Lord Britton and his wife Elizabeth Gertrude Britton founded the New York Botanical Garden.
Katya Alpert Gilden was an American best-selling novelist who wrote with her husband Bert Gilden under the pen-name "K. B. Gilden". The couple produced two major novels, Hurry Sundown (1964), which was made into an Otto Preminger film of the same title in 1967, and Between the Hills and the Sea (1971), published four months after Bert's death.
A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports, art, and science. They often include materials such as opinion columns, weather forecasts, reviews of local services, obituaries, birth notices, crosswords, editorial cartoons, comic strips, and advice columns.
John Kroll was an American drama and film critic. His career at Newsweek spanned 37 years—more than half the publication's existence.
Etheleen Renee Shipp is an American journalist and columnist. As a columnist for the New York Daily News, she was awarded the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for "her penetrating columns on race, welfare and other social issues."
Margalit Fox is an American writer. After earning a master's degree in linguistics, she began her career in publishing in the 1980s. In 1994, she joined The New York Times as a copy editor for its Book Review and later wrote widely on language, culture and ideas for The New York Times, New York Newsday, Variety and other publications. She joined the obituary department of The New York Times in 2004 and authored more than 1,400 obituaries before her retirement from the staff of the paper in 2018. Since 2007, Fox has written several nonfiction books.
Paul Vitello is an American journalist who has written for a variety of publications. He wrote an award-winning news column for Newsday from 1982 to 2005. He went on to write for the religion and obituary sections for The New York Times and has taught at Stony Brook University's School of Journalism.
Obit is a 2016 documentary film about the obituary writers at The New York Times.
Ann Wroe FRSL is an English author and columnist who has been the obituaries editor of The Economist since 2003.