Indian obits

As Factiva has added more Indian and Pakistani news sources I've been glancing at their obits. The subcontinent is a huge source of English-language journalism and other writing. What I particularly like about it, beyond the details of lives abroad, is the stylistic differences to American and modern England English.

Check out the first graf here for vocabulary: "is no more" stedda "died." Also "doyen," "breathed his last" and "last remains." Later: "broked," "condoled,"

The attention to the manner of death reminds me of 19th century obits, which frequently included dramatic accounts of the deceased's last moments. You almost never see that nowadays.

Tea doyen Hemen Barooah passes away

580 words

31 July 2013

Assam Tribune

HNASST

English

Copyright 2013. Assam Tribune (P) Ltd.

GUWAHATI, July 31 -- Hemendra Prasad Barooah, the doyen of the State's tea industry is no more. According to senior journalist Wasbir Hussain, who authored the biography of Barooah, the tea planter had gone to Bangkok on July 27 for a medical check-up. Today around 2 pm Bangkok time, he returned to his hotel from the hospital and when he was taking his lunch he suddenly felt uncomfortable and despite the best efforts of the doctors of the hospital which was conducting the medical check-up, Barooah breathed his last around 3-30 pm Bangkok time. Hussain said the senior executives of Barooah's company will rush to Bangkok tonight and after consulting the members of his family, would arrive at a decision on where to bring the last remains of Barooah. Abhijit Sarma, a former chairman of the Assam Tea Planters' Association (ATPA) said Barooah was 86. According to Sarma, Barooah was accompanied by one of his nieces in his journey to Bangkok.

Barooah leaves behind two daughters and a host of relatives. 

A Harvard University alumnus, Barooah set up a corporate house Barooah and Associates with its headquarter in Kolkata. He was a chairman of the Indian Tea Association (ITA). The ITA got itself involved in the construction of the Pragjyoti ITA Centre for Performing Arts at Machkhowa in the city during his tenure as its chairman. Barooah was also a founder of the Assam Tea Brokers Pvt Ltd, the first tea broking house of the State. He was also a chairman of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and founder and chairman of the Kaziranga Golf Resort. 

Barooah is also known for his involvement in cultural activities and as an art connoisseur. He produced the Hindi feature film Ek Pal directed by Kalpana Lajmi. Dr Bhupen Hazarika scored the music for the film, Sarma said. Wasbir Hussain said Barooah also collected 600 paintings of doyens like M F Hussain. Barooah was honoured by the Central Government with the Padmashree this year. Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi while condoling the death of Barooah, described him as a distinguished industrialist. 

His death is an irreparable loss to society, said the Chief Minister. Asom Gana Parishad president Prafulla Kumar Mahanta has condoled the death of Barooah as a great loss to the society. State BJP president Sarbananda Sonowal also mourned the death of Barooah. North Eastern Tea Association chairman Bidyananda Barkakoty mourned the death of Barooah. Barooah will, however, continue to inspire those involved in State's tea industry and would remain icon of the industry.

 Abhijit Sarma, past chairman of the ATPA deeply mourned the death of Barooah and said the State's tea industry has lost a leader with his death. Wasbir Hussain described Barooah as a multi-faceted personality and for him the tea business was not the only passion. He was a social and cultural ambassador of Assam, because of his immense interest in art, culture and music of the State. It will be difficult to fill the void, he added. 

Gautam Prasad Barooah, retired tea executive and a close associate of Barooah described his demise as a big loss to Assam. He said that Barooah worked silently for development of the State in various spheres like industry, culture and films.

Published by HT Syndication with permission from Assam Tribune.

For any query with respect to this article or any other content requirement, please contact Editor at htsyndication@hindustantimes.com
The Assam Tribune Pvt Ltd

Death and the obit writer's life

Enjoyed this chance to talk about what we do, at least my experience of it, for this online magazine. 

Can Eliot Spitzer improve his obit with a stellar comeback?

My name is Joe Coscarelli and I'm a reporter for New York magazine. I'm writing to with hopes of gaining some (potentially light-hearted) insight about obituaries from professionals, specifically in reference to Eliot Spitzer's -- a long time from now, God willing.

When his prostitution scandal first broke in 2008, there was a mention from a friend in the Times about how the scandal did not have to lead his obituary:

“I told him that I think, in the end, this incident will be a footnote to a great life lived greatly, and that he still has the ability to make enormous contributions,” said Alan M. Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor, who once counted Mr. Spitzer as a student and now counts him as a friend. “One of his goals has to be to make this a footnote in his obituary, and not make it the lead.”

A year later, a similar subject was touched upon in Spitzer's interview with Vanity Fair:

“Do you think the scandal will ever go away?,” I asked.
“No. My obituary’s written,” [Spitzer] replied with shocking finality. “And that is a very hard thing to live with.”

My question is, in light of his comeback and campaign for NYC comptroller: What would Spitzer have to do to not have his misdeeds lead his obit? Would he have to win this seat? Become mayor? President? Is there any hope for him?

I'd love to chat with any obit writers or editors you might be able to connect me with, whether via email or by phone at 212 508 0593.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Ever Hopeful

"Writing obituaries is usually the first job a new reporter gets, a place to cut his or her teeth and learn the writing craft. Chomping at the bit to get to 'harder news,' reporters have long chafed at the seemingly boring job of compiling death notices. I am different in that I think writing an obituary is an honor and a respectful way to mark one person’s passage on this plane. I hope we all get a good one when our time comes." --Barbara Morgan

Giving The Dead A Voice

If you'd like to add audio clips to your obituaries, but aren't sure how to do it, there's a new tool that can help. It's called Soundcite.

Soundcite was produced by the Northwestern University Knight Lab as a way to make inline audio "easy and seamless" to produce. Simply record your audio file (in AIFF, WAVE, FLAC, OGG, MP2, MP3, AAC, AMR or WMA formats) and upload it to SoundCloud. Or, if you don't have your own audio, search the SoundCloud directory for the clip you need. Then, copy the file's URL into the Soundcite page, and it'll give you the embed code for the online version of your story.

For example, I wanted to add audio to my Christopher Hitchens obit. I searched SoundCloud and found that HachetteAudio had uploaded an excerpt from his memoir "Hitch 22." I grabbed the URL, pasted it into Soundcite and embedded the code into the obit. Very easy.

Pet obits

Like writing children's books, I suspect that writing obits about one's pets is one of those things a lot of people assume they can do well -- until it's time to actually do it.  I am never sure I want to read about someone's pet who has died.  I figure it's probably going to contain elements of endearing, poignant, funny and of course, the dreaded arc of life we are "lucky" enough to watch by outliving dogs, especially, to the extent that we usually do.

I know the writer is going to go from puppyhood to dysplasia. Worst case scenario, I'll probably read about the expectant eyes on the trip to the vet's office at the end.  "Are we going to the park?"  None of that sort of thing appears in this obit of a golden retriever, written by Daniel Ruth of the Tampa Bay Times, who also just won a Pulitzer for his political columns.

Something We Never Want To Experience

We regret that due to technical difficulties, the report on Nelson Mandela's death was unintentionally published. @dw_english

— DW (English) (@dw_english) June 14, 2013

(h/t Romenesko)

What is the future of obits?

Here are a few of my ideas:

What are your thoughts?

(Note: Additional resources available at http://bit.ly/futureofobits)

Missed The SPOW Conference In Toronto?

No worries! Tamara Baluja at J-Source: The Canadian Journalism Project live-blogged Saturday's workshops. Click here to read a running commentary of the day's events.

New Facebook Group for Grimsters!

Jade Walker was asked - or volunteered - to set up a Facebook Group for obit writers. You must check it out.

On the new FB group page for grimsters, we have posted the names of the winners of the SPOW Awards which were presented during the SPOW Conference in Toronto this past weekend.

We'll post them on the Obituary Forum blog too, but we want to lure you to the FB group first.

More to come - both on this blog and our FB group page - on awards, the fabulous Toronto conference, future conferences, the future of SPOW and more!

Riddle of the Labyrinth: a kind of extended obit

From Kathryn Schulz' review of New York Times senior obituary writer Margalit Fox's The Riddle of the Labyrinth -- The Quest to Crack and Ancient Code (Ecco Press 2013) in New York Magazine:

That beat does not normally make celebrities of its practitioners, so it says a lot about Fox’s writing ability that her obits have acquired something of a cult following. The form demands three things: a nose for interesting facts, the ability to construct a taut narrative arc, and a Dickens-level gift for concisely conveying personality.

Here is Fox's take on her craft and how she became interested in the work of Brooklyn College classics professor Alice Kober, who died in 1950.  Her cursory, resume-like obit at the time barely mentions Linear B, an endless series of pictograms unearthed in ancient Greece no one could decipher.  Yet Kober's largely unrecognized work over decades made cracking the code possible.  Fox's newly released Riddle of the Labyrinth seems like the best kind of book to come out of newsrooms, in which writers decide to take a subject that's not due at 6 p.m. today and follow it wherever it leads. 

EBITS - the latest online obituary venture - fires a warning shot....

Pretty lame.

MyEbituary LLC Declares Death of the Obituary with New Social Media-Based Ebits On Myebit.com, users can create and interact with virtual memorial scenes KENOSHA, Wis., May 15, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Conventional obituaries may have been laid to rest as MyEbituary LLC, a new memorial site startup, introduces ebituaries to the world of social media. Ebits, as they are called, allow users to create a unique type of online obituary that centers upon an interactive scene of remembrance that can be customized with various landscapes, headstones, urns and other decorations that users embed into the scene. (Photo:  http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130515/PH14068-a) (Photo:  http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130515/PH14068-b) Hoping to change the outdated mode of conventional obituaries that have not evolved with the expansion in interactive online graphics applications, the company expects to eventually have ebits created for the approximately 8,000 people who pass away each day in the United States. According to company president Michael Boozer, "People deserve to be remembered online by something more than just a static photograph and some text placed on a webpage, especially with today's technology." Ebits can be created for loved ones who have passed away or for current users who want to stake out a plot in the virtual world. Resembling a social media profile, myebit.com allows people to write their own ebituary in advance and share their ebits across major social media networks like Facebook and Twitter. The scenes are interactive allowing visitors to show their respects by placing tributes such as flowers, awareness ribbons, crosses and other objects directly into the scene. Tributes can be embedded anywhere into the scene along with a short message of condolence that appears when hovering over it. Scenes are designed using a variety of different landscapes or users can upload their own, such as an actual photograph of a real cemetery, allowing distant friends and relatives the opportunity to reflect upon the deceased. Headstones or urns, engraved with an epitaph, are provided in numerous colors and styles while decorations, such as plants, trees, animated birds and other objects can be embedded into the scene to create a unique place of remembrance. "We wanted to replicate an actual cemetery or other resting place, where visitors are free to leave flowers and other tributes around a grave or other type of memorial," adds Mr. Boozer, stating that "Users can also designate caretakers to manage their ebit, who can decorate it for special occasions and manage tributes that are placed by others, just like in real life." Other features of the site allows users to create their own "Bucket List" and write their own "Last Words" that are unlocked upon their passing. Users can also create their own family burial plot by sharing the headstones of others and placing them into their scene for a single place of reflection. Launched in time for the Memorial Day holiday, the site is directed towards U.S. users but can be accessed worldwide by visiting myebit.com via the web or any mobile device. MyEbituary LLC was founded in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2011 Phone: (715) 869-3248 Contact: Michael Boozer Email Media Kit with Video and Image Downloads: www.myebit.com/press This press release was issued through eReleases® Press Release Distribution. For more information, visit http://www.ereleases.com. SOURCE MyEbituary LLC Web Site: https://www.myebit.com

Humorous Death Notices - an emerging subgenre?

It's not like we haven't seen funny death notices and homespun remembrances in the past, but recently we've had some great ones and after reading Antonia Larroux's, I'm wondering if we're seeing a full-scale trend

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?n=antonia-larroux&pid=164596250

Recall:

Harry Stamps

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sunherald/obituary.aspx?pid=163538353

Relatedly - but not quite the same thing - the very funny Val Patterson who used his death notice to reveal his lack of PhD and his safe-stealing legacy

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/saltlaketribune/obituary.aspx?n=val-patterson&pid=158526785

From a couple years ago:

Michael "Flathead" Blanchard

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/denverpost/obituary.aspx?pid=156944598

Obit contest deadline is May 4!

Multiple categories to suit your style.  Get your work out there for others to see.  Read about criteria and entry procedures on the new SPOW website.

A friends's diligent search

Whose life is "worthy" of a newspaper obituary?  Standards vary all over the place, of course, with papers such as the New York Times explicitly reserving that distinction for people of significant accomplishment.

By that definition alone, Roy Harris a former Wall Street Journal repoter and CFO magazine editor, figured his friend, artist Martyl Langsdorf, deserved more recognition than she got upon her death at 96. Langsdorf's "Doomsday clock" cover illustration for the June 1947 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists , the minute hand approaching midnight, became a symbol for the nuclear threat worldwide and, later, climate change.

But even as a seasoned journalist, Harris discovered that selling editors of the largest newspapers on the value of an obit subject is easier said than done.  Here is his interesting account of his ultimately successful struggle to gain some recognition for a singular life. 

The Future of Obituaries

Greetings, friends. I've been invited to give a lecture at the SPOW conference about the future of obituaries and I need your assistance. If you're willing to help, please complete this 5-minute survey. I promise to share the results in June.

New SPOW website

The new website is SocietyOfProfessionalObituaryWriters.org. You will find basic Toronto conference information there and a link to register (as with the post below). At the moment the link above, "Click here to return to the Society of Professional Obituary Writers," goes to a defunct website, but that will soon be changed to go to the new one.

Society of Professional Obituary Writers Conference

 (re-posting the earlier item about the conference)

The 2013 SPOW Conference will be held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, June 7-9, 2013.

Go to http://www.eventbrite.com/event/5639271212# for a bit more information and to register.

Return to Obituary Forum for more details to be provided by local host Ron Csillag and his Canadian team.

A couple of thoughts on the NY Times obit controversy

Update:  I've thought about this some more (unlike most, apparently, I find this a tricky subject), and would qualify my post below in one way:  While I think most outraged readers of the Brill obit made little effort to get into the writer's head and imagine why he did what he did in the lede -- like, maybe this aspect of domesticity was that important to the subject?  and obits are about subject, not anyone else? -- it is still on  anyone publishing anything to anticipate public reaction.  I respect Martin and McDonald for standing behind their story (under Copernican pressure to recant), but the fact that they had no idea they might get the flak is on them.

One more note:  In discussion of this obit on the blog Jezebel, Andrea Tierson contributed this:

Maybe the Times was trying to humanize its subject. cf. the lede of the paper's Albert Einstein obit (1955): 

"In 1904, Albert Einstein, then an obscure young man of 23, could be seen daily in the late afternoon wheeling a baby carriage on the streets of Bern, Switzerland, halting now and then, unmindful to the traffic around him, to scribble down some mathematical symbols in the notebook that shared the carriage with his infant son, also named Albert."

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/topics/einstein-obit.pdf

Looks like he's being noted as world's best dad before his scientific prowess is mentioned.


Here is what is known about a New York Times obituary on rocket scientist Yvonne Brill, and the Twitter outrage that followed.The story's original lede read as follows:

She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off work to raise three children. 'The world's best mom,' her son Matthew said.

After a lot of outraged reactions on social media, the lede was subsequently changed to read:

She was a brilliant rocket scientist who followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children. “The world’s best mom,” her son Matthew said.

"New York Times Changes Sexist Obit About Scientist Yvonne Brill," the Daily Beast proclaimed.  "Responsive!" a Twitter follower noted approvingly.

Beyond reversing the order of her scientific and domestic lives and removing the stroganoff reference, the story remained unchanged.

Sullivan in a blog post today summarized her thoughts and the paper's decision to alter its lede.  She cited an interesting and useful Columbia Journalism Review article which alerts writers to avoid gender stereotyping when writing about female scientists; spoke with Martin and William McDonald, his editor (both of whom stood behind the original story); and concluded that framing the story as one about gender "had the effect of undervaluing what really landed Mrs. Brill on the Times obituaries page: her groundbreaking scientific work."

As an early and lonely defender of this obit, I would like to make just a few points:

The CJR article Sullivan cited as instructive in avoiding gender stereotypes quotes one of its primary sources saying it is legitimate in her view to bring gender discrimination issues into a profile of a woman in science:

For instance, if you’re writing a story about sexism in science or about the gender gap in leadership roles in science or you’re writing about sex-related issues specifically.
 
What’s not ok is to turn a story about a scientist’s professional life into one about her personal life or her gender roles..

Brill was denied the option of majoring in her chosen field of engineering at the University of Manitoba, ostensibly due to a lack of accommodations.  While I understand that obits about any minority or underrepresented group present ready-made cliches for the taking -- and that one of these can be that the subject "overcame barriers" -- not being able to major in your chosen field to me seems like an obstacle worth reporting.

No fair reading of Martin's obit could lead one to conclude that Brill's many contributions, from developing more efficient rocket thrusters to contributing to rocket and satellite designs -- work that landed her in the Inventors Hall of Fame -- were remarkable because, as the CJR piece correctly warns us against doing, "She accomplished all of this while being a woman!"

The stroganoff lede that aroused so much controversy sets up a different, and more complicated, kind of contrast -- between a woman who preferred to be addressed as "Mrs.," and who embraced some of those societal norms about gender while, yes, overcoming them.

Also on Monday, writer Paul Carr on pandodaily took on what he called "readers of the Daily Internet Outrage Memo."  It's an interesting take, and the points he makes about writing are particularly relevant.

At the same time, I would not dismiss objections to the original lede as groundless.  I can  see how it looks: after a century of consciousness raising about gender equality and seemingly great strides forward, an eminent newspaper bends over backwards to link a brilliant female scientist to her cooking.

I just think a lot of the people protesting this are getting the story wrong. 

Society of Professional Obituary Writers Conference

The 2013 SPOW Conference will be held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, June 7-9, 2013.

Go to http://www.eventbrite.com/event/5639271212# for a bit more information and to register.

Return to Obituary Forum for more details to be provided by local host Ron Csillag and his Canadian team.