Death Goes Digital

On January 19, 2007, the New York Times posted a short video of Art Buchwald on its Web site, a few hours after the legendary humor columnist lost his year-long battle with cancer. It opened with Buchwald speaking directly into the camera.

“I’m Art Buchwald, and I just died.”

In seven words, the Times thrust the oft-used method of prepping obituaries in advance into the digital age.

"We were lucky that he died first, in a sense," says New York Times obituaries editor Bill McDonald. “We had no idea if it would work, of course," says McDonald, who admits approaching subjects is "is awkward, there's no getting around it.”

“It worked for Art Buchwald because he renewed his celebrity,” says full-time Washington Post obituary writer Adam Bernstein. “He enjoyed a newfound celebrity in dying — it worked for who he was and his reputation for making a big story out of his death."

Added Bernstein: "I thought it was fun but added nothing in addition to the novelty."

While declining to name names, McDonald, who has been obituaries editor since February 2006, says the Times has been working on the project for about a year and has a "fairly good number” of video obits “in the can ready to go.”

But prepping non-digital obits can be just as awkward. It was, in fact, that same method of “canned” obits — like the one written for Gerald Ford and published on December 27, 2006 by the Washington Post — that drew criticism when it was revealed that the writer had died 11 months before Ford did.

The ‘Death’ Bank

Despite the potential for awkwardness, anticipation is key when it comes to producing obituaries for major figures. "You have to maintain a bank of advance obits in order to have length and depth and fact-checking,” McDonald explains. “It would be impossible to write on deadline otherwise.”

The Times itself boasts a bank of over 1,200 such “advancers” — the oldest was penned back in 1982, also a case where the subject has outlived the author — and they are constantly refreshing the copy. “Some become obsolete and have to be rewritten,” says McDonald. “And some are fine, they get a minor dusting and in the paper they go."

Prepping obituaries for important figures in advance is crucial because it eliminates the frenzy of creating them at the last minute and prevents factual errors from being introduced in haste. “We could never produce a comprehensive, well-researched, well-crafted 5,000-word biography of a head of state, say, or a literary giant, in a day's time or less,” says McDonald. “And yet our print readers would expect to see such an effort from the Times in their morning papers the day after a major figure died. Our Web readers would probably expect to see the same in minutes.”

But with so many people to cover, how do they decide which ones to tackle first? One way major news outlets like the Times and the Post make the call is by monitoring the declining health of notables, as well as other factors including age, external risks and prominence. McDonald likens this challenge to “battlefield triage — tending to the most aged and the supremely important first, and then hoping the others can hang on a little longer until we can get to them.”

Says Bernstein: “We want to be ready when they’re ready.”

Dick Cheney Is Dead

The Ford incident brought to mind a classic Saturday Night Live skit in which Tom Brokaw, portrayed by Dana Carvey, pre-films a series of NBC Night News segments announcing Ford’s death in various absurd scenarios, just in case the ex-president dies while Brokaw’s away on vacation (“Gerald Ford was mauled senselessly by a circus lion in a convenience store”). But, jokes aside, there have been plenty of real-world examples of letting the cat slip out of the casket.

On April 16, 2003, CNN inadvertently released the mock-ups of Web pages announcing the deaths of Vice President Dick Cheney, Ronald Reagan, Bob Hope, Pope John Paul II and a handful of other notables that had been pre-written back in 2001. Although they were immediately yanked from the CNN server, the drafts proclaiming the yet-to-happen deaths drew quite a reaction. (As if it weren’t embarrassing enough, some of the premature obits had been created using a template for Queen Elizabeth, so the farewells to Cheney and some of the others deemed each the “UK’s favorite grandmother.”)  CNN also prepped online farewells to Fidel Castro, Nelson Mandela and, yes, Gerald Ford.

This wasn’t the first time the “victims” of  CNN.com’s flub had been wrongly identified as deceased. In 1998, the erroneous news of Bob Hope’s death appeared on the Associated Press Web site and was subsequently announced on the Senate floor — and, by extension, broadcast live on CSPAN. Others, like Pope John Paul II, Kurt Cobain, Joe DiMaggio, Marcus Garvey, Queen Elizabeth, James Earl Jones — even Mark Twain – have fallen victim to the premature obituary.

Bill McDonald recalls the one the Times published for the actress Katharine Sergava in December 2003: “It was deeply embarrassing for us and, more important, painful to people close to [her].” According to McDonald, the fallout “shook us enough that it forced us to change our ways.” Now the Times insists on attribution and won’t publish an obit until the death can be confirmed by someone in a reliable position to do so.

‘Instant Experts’

Many of the newsworthy figures who pass away do not have advance obits, especially those who made a significant impact but weren’t necessarily famous or well-known. As a result, the top obituary departments have writers whose main task is writing “daily” obituaries.

One of the more challenging aspects of the job is also what many writers expressed is most rewarding — the variety of people they get to cover. As Times obit writer Fox observes: "Unlike other writers, who are experts in their fields, an obit writer must become an instant expert on any one of a range of subjects, as we’re starting from zero most days." 

Fox delights in the challenge, likening the work she does on a daily basis to Mission: Impossible: “I’ll get a call and someone says a name and 90% of the time I've never heard of it. … All that's missing is 'this tape will self-destruct.”

From there, it’s a race against time to research and write the obit on deadline. Adds Fox: “Our job is a great deal like being parachuted into terra incognita without so much as a map or compass, and having to emerge just a few hours later with an accurate — and, in an ideal world, engaging — account of the lay of the land.”

Bernstein echoes this idea. “You have to balance accuracy with speed, which doesn't always happen when you are on deadline."

The hardest part about writing obits? “When you’re not prepared for a major figure to die on deadline,” says Bernstein, who recalled the hectic day when he had only 3 hours to spend on Ray Charles. "We had to do [Arthur] Schlesinger in a day. We weren't ready, and it was embarrassing. It should never happen again."

Furthermore, the Internet — as it has for nearly everything else — has changed the game for obituary writers, who are increasingly having to compete with the frenetic pace of the Web. While digital innovations allow for new ways of presenting obits, like blogs and the Times' Buchwald video, both the Times and the Post expressed that they were still largely structured for print obituaries. “With the Web,” says McDonald, “the deadline is always in the present.”

Not a ‘Dead’ Beat

Despite the grip of the Internet, there are those, like Times’ Fox, who insist the craft of the print obit is not dead. “It gives people something to clip," says Fox. "I think we'll be around a while yet. It's not yet time to write the obituary of the print obituary."

But if “everyone knows the end” of the story in an obituary, then why do people tell Fox that the obit page is the first they read each day?

The answer, she says, lies in the storytelling: "We all love to be told a story. [Obituaries] can tell stories, they can be fun, can be interesting ... not a dry resume of life. This is the golden age of obituary writing in the paper.” 

Indeed, because of the attention things like the Times’ Art Buchwald video has brought to the art of the obit, those who cover death feel a renewed sense of purpose — and eventually a new revenue stream.

As McDonald told readers in a Talk to the Newsroom feature last fall, “there's both journalistic and, yes, revenue potential to be found in — there's no other way to put it — death. I hope that doesn't sound crass. But our beat is, like sports, dining, opera or nuclear physics, part of the human story. (The last chapter, I suppose.) And we are talking about history, after all, whether of the personal kind or of the geopolitical, and readers, I think, are fascinated by it and always eager for more.”

Dead Magazine

At least that’s what Obit magazine is banking on.

Published by the Princeton, New Jersey-based husband and wife team J. Robert and Barbara Hillier (no relation to The Hillier Group), the title had been slated to launch February 1 but was pushed back to mid-2007. Obit managing editor Krishna Vandavolu says they are hoping to publish one or two times this year with the intention of eventually publishing every other month.

"At first people are often bogged down by the idea of a magazine about death,” says Andavolu. “But the magazine is not about death; it's about life, people with lives, your life and my life."

But with major magazines folding and the scarcity of magazine launches, is there really room for a magazine devoted to obituaries?

Andavolu thinks so. The magazine plans to feature in-depth profiles that go far beyond the traditional obituary or newspaper wire story. Obit also plans to cover the reception of the media to newsworthy deaths; one column in the works, “Best Send-off” will showcase the most sensational farewells. Other planned topics range from aging issues to funerals and “green” options for burial to the politics of death.  Obit’s Web site, launched on April 1, features news and departments called “Mourning Roundup” and “Off-beat Obit.”

Despite skepticism, Fox says she is looking forward to the launch. “There are lots of obit groupies out there,” says Fox. “My hat’s off to them … I'm sure here at the office we will rush out and buy it."

[Emily Million is a writer based in New York. She can be reached at emily DOT million AT gmail DOT com.]