... is a lot like writing about death.
That's one of the things
New York Times obituaries editor Bill McDonald told me this afternoon. I recorded our conversation and I'll pull some tips out of it when I edit the audio later on the plane. But for now, here are a few:
43 Write obituaries as true narratives. Few places in the newspaper allow for classic narrative storytelling in the way the sports and obituaries pages do. Only downside of the obituary: "We give away the ending in the first sentence."
44 Stick to conventions, but push their limits. In the lede, for instance, the reader needs to find out who died, when it happened, and perhaps where and how. But conventions don't bar you from writing a lede like the one McDonald cited as an example in the audio interview -- I'll post it later.
45 Experiment with multimedia. The
Times has been collecting advance obituaries for a long time. McDonald said the paper currently has a collection of 1,300. Recently they started doing them in video. A piece on
Art Buchwald is the first and, so far, only one the
Times has published. McDonald hopes the video obituaries will eventually become a regular feature. Could you do something like this in your community?
Coming soon >>> Chip sends some tips from Lucy Ferris. Books. The end is in sight!
