J Station

At my workplace, most of the obituary news are personally written or directly edited by the editor.
The importance of an obituary is such.
I have been listening to how one should write an obit and what do the reporters contribute to the community by writing an obit, from the editor’s desk almost every week.

Here are a few I heard from our editor.

• We sum up a life in a few paragraphs.
• We come to know of the contribution of the deceased to society only after his death in many cases, where he or she was not a well known person.
• For many people, an obituary is the only story the newspaper ever carries about them.
• In an obit, you don’t write about death, but about the life of the deceased.

So, while newspapers treat the obits as news stories, unless they are advertised, the reporter has the responsibility of putting out correct and complete information and additional inputs from various sources. Also to follow the newspaper’s style and policy.

Some important dos and don’ts:

• Check with the family of the deceased for correct information. Do not start writing an obit based on information from ’some friend’. They may be hoaxes.
• Watch your language. If you are writing the cause of the death, a person never dies ‘as a result of a kidney operation or a heart surgery’, but dies ‘following a surgery’.
• A man is survived by his wife, not his widow and a woman is survived by her husband ant not his widower!
• Do a research by talking to people in the same field if he was a well known person. Or to his walk mates in the park or the visitors at the funeral, if he is not a public figure.
• Don’t think any contribution by the deceased is insignificant, be it a voluntary service or just keeping the spirit of his family high. They may be the distinguishing characters of that person’s life.

A sample of an obit I wrote is here.