Archive: September 2007
Local Lives
Most of the larger obituaries in major newspapers are about the famous and the mighty. When a celebrity, political leader or distinguished scientist dies, we try to describe the significance that person's life as fully as we can. But what about people who weren't well known but who left a...
By Matt Schudel | September 30, 2007; 12:05 PM ET | Comments (3)
That Was Some Lady
As a rule, British obituaries are bolder with more intimate details than American obits. By English standards, American obituaries can seem positively starchy and proper. In some respects, this is because the Brits seem to have a neverending stream of wealthy eccentrics and wastrels who make a lifetime of mischief...
By Adam Bernstein | September 27, 2007; 1:58 PM ET | Comments (5)
Learning Journalism in the Summer of Watergate
There was something oddly familiar about the name on an obit I read this morning. I couldn't place it, or the photo that went with it, until I got down to this line: "Within a few years, she started a summer session course for high school journalism students at Catholic...
By Patricia Sullivan | September 26, 2007; 12:06 PM ET | Comments (0)
Burial at Sea
Ever since I read Jessica Mitford's "American Way of Death" years ago, the whole idea of burying bodies in dedicated parks with impenetrable vaults seemed, well, kind of creepy to me. Whatever happened to recycling? Doesn't the Bible say something about "from dust to dust"? Anyway, for eco-conscious, green, reef-loving...
By Patricia Sullivan | September 20, 2007; 6:07 PM ET | Comments (0)
If Only We Knew ...
In today's paper (Sept. 20), we have an obituary of Ernest Peter Uiberall, an Army lieutenant colonel who was an interpreter during the Nazi war crime trials at Nuremberg after World War II. Uiberall had a fascinating, if harrowing life. He was born in Vienna and was part of the...
By Matt Schudel | September 20, 2007; 3:30 PM ET | Comments (1)
The depth of archives
Overlooked in the hoopla about Brand X removing online restrictions on its columnists is that they are also opening up the last 20 years worth of news archives to all comers. As obit writers, we are great fans of archives. We occasionally get calls from people doing genealogical research who...
By Patricia Sullivan | September 19, 2007; 2:32 PM ET | Comments (1)
Death Du Jour
Lurid tales of 19th-century New York have always captivated me. They destroy the illusion fostered by generations of politicians of a better, cleaner America before (take your pick) Stravinsky, ragtime, jazz, rock and rap hastened our moral collapse. The New York Times today offered this marvelous woebegone account of a...
By Adam Bernstein | September 19, 2007; 10:39 AM ET | Comments (0)
Radio, Radio
Last Friday, a reader sent an outraged note to the Post ombudsman, Deborah Howell, saying it was " just insane, ridiculous" that we hadn't done an obituary on Jake Einstein, who had developed the Washington area's first alternative rock station, WHFS-FM, in Bethesda. The reader said our oversight was "just...
By Matt Schudel | September 18, 2007; 11:59 AM ET | Comments (0)
Death Du Jour
Favorite detailed obit of the day comes from the Times of London and its terrific use of the word "yomp": http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article2469102.ece...
By Adam Bernstein | September 17, 2007; 6:06 PM ET | Comments (0)
Ways to Meet Your Maker
Few people want to leave this earth before their time; but who's to say when the right time is? I marvel at the dangers that surround us daily (Is that street grate latched? Ever consider how much trust we place in highway engineers?) and wonder that we don't see more...
By Patricia Sullivan | September 17, 2007; 11:22 AM ET | Comments (0)
Saint Noochie?
The Post offers a Sunday obit feature called A Local Life, which structurally can be more relaxed than the standard "news obit" that immediately tells the who, when, where, how and why of a story. I have tried to find subjects who are unpredictable, in some ways elusive. Two of...
By Adam Bernstein | September 17, 2007; 11:15 AM ET | Comments (0)
Fascinating Fake
The New York Times wrote an obituary recently for Joe O'Donnell, who professed to have been an official White House photographer for five administrations and taken defining images of those eras (Little John-John saluting his father's coffin in 1963, et al.). When a series of retired news photographers started questioning...
By Adam Bernstein | September 17, 2007; 10:34 AM ET | Comments (0)
Bad News in Obits
After writing an obituary for Washington jurist John Garrett Penn, I received vastly different reviews from readers for how the story handled an unpleasant aspect of the judge's career. And it speaks to a larger issue of how obituary writers handle unflattering facts on such a sensitive matter as an...
By Adam Bernstein | September 14, 2007; 12:37 PM ET | Comments (0)
Anecdotes
As we go "live" with our obit blog, we hope to encourage readers to offer vivid anecdotes and remembrances about fascinating lives. Here's one from the e-mail bag, about a renowned scientist and mushroom hunter: Because you wrote the long obituary on Betty Hay, I thought you might be interested...
By Adam Bernstein | September 12, 2007; 1:52 PM ET | Comments (0)
A New Season
It's almost autumn, when work traditionally speeds up on the obits desk after a quiet summer. Except the quiet summer never happened -- we've been stretched to the hilt since May. Unlike a lot of major metropolitan newspapers, we write about the regular people of the region as well as...
By Patricia Sullivan | September 11, 2007; 3:14 PM ET | Comments (0)
About Post Mortem
Welcome to our blog, Post Mortem, by the news obituary writers at The Washington Post -- Adam Bernstein, Matt Schudel, Joe Holley and Patricia Sullivan. Obituaries have become an increasingly popular feature in the newspaper and online, as well as on Internet discussion groups, in books and magazines and even...
By washingtonpost.com editors | September 5, 2007; 5:49 PM ET | Comments (6)
Matt Schudel
Matt Schudel has been an obituary writer at The Washington Post since 2004. He grew up on a farm in Nebraska and attended country school. He has degrees in English from the University of Nebraska and the University of Virginia. He worked for a now-defunct book division of U.S....
By washingtonpost.com editors | September 5, 2007; 5:42 PM ET | Comments (2)
Patricia Sullivan
I've ricocheted around the country in my career, covering a wide variety of beats in a number of fascinating places, with a single common thread: I can't hold a danged job. I've been an obit writer at The Washington Post since September 2003, covering the lives of such personalities as...
By washingtonpost.com editors | September 5, 2007; 5:38 PM ET | Comments (2)
Adam Bernstein
Adam Bernstein has been helping put the "post" in Washington Post for more than six years. The American Society of Newspaper Editors has recognized his obit writing for doing "a great job revealing the small details and anecdotes that get at the essence of the person." He was also featured...
By washingtonpost.com editors | September 5, 2007; 5:35 PM ET | Comments (0)
Joe Holley
Joe Holley is a native Texan who has been the editor of the Texas Observer, an editorial page editor and columnist in San Antonio and San Diego and a frequent contributor to Texas Monthly, Columbia Journalism Review and other publications. He also wrote speeches for former Texas Gov. Ann Richards...
By Michael Corones | September 5, 2007; 1:30 PM ET | Comments (0)
