Sunday, March 12, 2017

XXX of obit writers?

The Quill Cafe has put together a rather extensive list of collective nouns for writers. Examples include:

* An ambiance of writers
* A creation of writers
* A dispatch of writers
* An idea of writers
* A sentence of writers
* A subplot of writers

What should be the collective noun for obituary writers?

Sunday, March 05, 2017

Where are the women?

Reader Joan Tarbox of Rochester, N.Y., recently complained that the obituary pages in The New York Times were dominated by men.

“I’d love to track the obits for a month so I could give you some hard statistics,” she wrote.

The Times' public editor, Liz Spayd, decided to do the work for her and learned that 75 percent of the obits published in 2016 memorialized the life of a man.

It's likely the statistics are similar at other news organizations. Any ideas for how we, the obituary writers, can address this disparity?