Saturday, May 17, 2008

SPOW in the news

The Society of Professional Obituary Writers Awards and the recent obit writers workshop in Portland, Ore., are getting some media attention.

The Philadelphia Daily News ran a story on May 15, 2008, titled Former DN obit writer Nicholson wins life honor about DN (Daily News, not Death Notice) retiree Jim Nicholson receiving SPOW's first Lifetime Achievement Award in Obituary Writing.

Nicholson says of the photo that ran with the story, "I think they used my high school prom pic, but that's OK."

To see a more recent Nicholson mug, go to the SPOW Awards page.

Adam Bernstein gave a workshop report titled "Conference of Death" on the Washington Post's Post Mortem blog on May 14, 2008.

The blog provides a link to Adam's article titled Death Beat: the Art of Advanced Obituaries which was posted in Global Journalist on Feb. 12, 2008.

Joe Strupp told Editor and Publisher readers about who won SPOW Awards in his May 14, 2008, article: Obit Writer Awards Honor 'AJC' and Toronto's 'Globe and Mail.'

Tim Bullamore got some press coverage in the U.K. in the Bath Chronicle - OBITUARY WRITER SCOOPS INTERNATIONAL AWARD - and the University of Bath's Centre for Death and Society for receiving SPOW honors.

Do you know of other published accounts of the awards and/or the workshop?

5 comments:

Alana Baranick said...

Romenesko posted a link to Joe Strupp's E&P article at Poynter Online.

Anonymous said...

Hi there, all.
My name's Kate Sweeney. I'm a North Carolina-based writer, putting together a book about our changing ways of remembering our dead in this country, everything from green burial to online urn retailers, to, of course, obituaries.

I'll be attending next month's 10th Great and look forward to meeting many of you.

One question that's been nagging at me that I wanted to go ahead and pose here is this: Have the number of papers that print "every-day Joe" obits in recent years, grown? (Those being, of course, obits not about famous people.) Does anyone have any figures on this? Newspapers that have added the Everyman Obit? Thanks so much.

Secondly, I'm also looking for hard evidence of whether the obituary's grown in popularity, period, in recent years.

Thanks, again. I appreciate your thoughts and suggestions.

Kate

Kay Powell said...

Fleeting Fame: My own newspaper's online edition had my Tuesday obit posted with the byline Kate Powell!

Alana Baranick said...

Maybe they got you confused with Kate Sweeney, Kay.

willson said...
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