WHAT OBIT
WRITERS ARE TALKING ABOUT:

Tombstone inscriptions:
Read all about them at Alana's Obituary Forum

 

 

 

 

 

Contact Information: alanabaranick@deathbeat.com Alana Baranick
The Plain Dealer
1801 Superior Ave.
Cleveland, OH 44114
(216) 999-4828

 

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Obituary writers and enthusiasts, whom I've met at the Great Obituary Writers Conferences put on by Carolyn Milford Gilbert, founder of the International Association of Obituarists, have shared many interesting and often amusing obits and other articles about obituaries, funerals and death via email. We've also had lively discussions about various obit-related subjects.

To expand these discussions and open them to other people, who've never attended these conferences, I've set up this blog:

http://www.obituaryforum.blogspot.com

Please join in the discussion with and ask questions of folks, who write about the dead for a living, and others, who study, read and/or write obituaries.

This page will be an extension of that email-sharing. I welcome your participation. Contact me at alanabaranick@deathbeat.com or by writing to me at Alana Baranick, The Plain Dealer, 1801 Superior Ave., Cleveland, OH 44114.

Here are some pre-blog (before September 2005) postings:

Observations about the 7th Great Obituary Writers International Conference, which was held June 16-18, 2005, in Bath, England.

A review of the conference is available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4112018.stm

Here's my report on the conference for Poynter Online: http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=84857

What can you add about this or past obit writers conferences or about obit writing in general? Do you have any nifty obit-related stories to share?

  • Maria, a blogger (see My Links) and writing teacher, wrote of obituary writing:
    With my whole heart, I value what obit. writers do. I have lost a lot of people in my life though I am "just" in my 40s. Reading the obit. is part of the mourning and the remembrance... it evokes so many memories... So thank you for all you do... What you have is both a craft and a calling, and I wish you well.
  • Stephen Miller of the New York Sun, always glad to find criticism of the big boys on the block, reports the following correction that appeared in the New York Times on July 25, 2005. Note the date on which the error was committed:
    "An obituary on Jan. 6, 1993, about William G. McLoughlin, an emeritus professor of history and religion at Brown University, misstated the date and cause of his death. Professor McLoughlin died on Dec. 28, 1992, not on Jan. 4, 1993; the cause was colon cancer, not liver cancer. The article also misstated the location of his World War II military service. It was at Fort Sill, Okla., not in Europe. The Times learned of the errors through a recent e-mail message from a family member."
    Here's the link to National Public Radio's July 27, 2005, report on the correction and interview with the e-mail-sending daughter of the long-dead professor: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4773994
  • The following link is for a profile of yours truly that was printed Aug. 3, 2005, in Cleveland's Scene Magazine, a weekly paper that proudly competes with The Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest daily. Although I'm posting it on my "Press Kit" page for publicity reasons, I'm also including it here because it is about obituary writing:
    http://www.clevescene.com/Issues/2005-08-03/news/news.html

 

Note to other grim-writers: I'd love to post links to articles by or about you, too. Email the links and anything else you'd like to share to alanabaranick@deathbeat.com.