Saturday, December 11, 2010

Facebook-based Obituary: Marvelous? Or Creepy?

One of my Facebook Friends (Janice Harayda) posted a FB link to a Washington Post story titled "A Facebook story: A mother's joy and a family's sorrow."

Along with the link, Janice implores the Washington Post: "Please don't barge into my Facebook page after I die and annotate my posts (as) you did this poor woman's: http://wapo.st/keepout. The result may be moving, but the technique is morally creepy."

Your thoughts?

Thursday, December 09, 2010

Obit Headline of the day

Maulana Marghuburrahman of Darul Uloom Deoband dies at 96
98 words
8 December 2010
UNNIND
English
Copyright 2010. HT Media Limited. All rights reserved.

New Delhi, Dec. 8 -- Maulana Marghuburrahman, Rector of Darul Uloom Deoband, died today at Bijnor in Uttar Pradesh after a prolonged illness. He was 96.

Friday, December 03, 2010

2011 Society of Professional Obituary Writers Awards and Conference

Finally, we've posted information about SPOW obit writing awards for 2011 on the awards page of our website.

This time, you've got more time to dust off and enter your best work of 2010, as we won't be presenting the awards until our conference in St. Petersburg, Fla., May 12-14, 2011. We'll have an awards luncheon and our professional development sessions at Poynter Institute for Media Studies.

The few details we have about the conference have been posted on our conference/convention page.

Our thanks to Cailin Brown, assistant professor of communications at The College of St. Rose in Albany, N.Y., for agreeing to coordinate our awards contest again, and to Andrew Meacham of the St. Petersburg Times for acting as the local host for our conference.