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Topic

The Craft of the Obituary

Description

Getting an obituary of a loved one into the newspaper can take on the aura of a sports competition. There is no fee for running Obits in the news section, or sometimes on the front page. But there is a cost for the Death Notices. The Obits are written by reporters and the Death Notices are not.

How do the Obit editors decide who gets this coveted space in a newspaper? What are the criteria in deciding who gets this coverage when news value, history and human interest converge in creating the art of the obituary? And what is the process whereby future Obits for famous people like politicians, sports figures and well-known individuals are written and archived long before they die---with the reporter often facing a tight deadline for creating such stories?

Come find out when two veteran journalists ---Matt Schudel and Harrison Smith---will talk about the challenges of writing lively stories about the dead in the Obituary pages of The Washington Post. The free Zoom program is slated for 7 to 8:30 p. on Tuesday, March 21. The program is sponsored by the DC Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and is open to all. Panel moderator is Kathleen Burns, a long-time DC SPJ chapter member and organizer of the program.

Time

Mar 21, 2023 07:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)

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Message preview	Hi there, You are invited to a Zoom webinar. When: Mar 21, 2023 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada) Topic: The Craft of the Obituary Register in advance for this webinar: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ocn6yVC-RQ-__biQA5HZZg After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. ---------- Webinar Speakers Matt Schudel Matt Schudel has been a professional journalist for more than 30 years and was an obituary writer at The Washington Post from 2004 to mid-2022. Schudel is the author of the critically acclaimed “Muhammad Ali: The Birth of a Legend, Miami 1961-1964.” He has written widely on books, jazz and the visual arts, and he lectures frequently on journalism and obituary writing. Harrison Smith Smith has been a reporter on The Washington Post’s obituaries desk since 2015. Smith has written about people who have made a significant impact on Washington, the country or the world, whether as big-game hunters, single-handed sailors, fallen dictators or Olympic medalists. In 2019, he was named by the Society of Professional Obituary Writers as the Obit Writer of the Year. Kathy Burns (Past DC SPJ Chapter president ) Burns was part of the Chicago Tribune team that won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of voter fraud. One of her beats was Consumer Affairs and she was recruited by the retail chain, Montgomery Wards, to serve as its national consumer affairs advisor. From there, she moved to Detroit to serve as bureau chief for Fairchild Publications, including its premier publication, Women’s Wear Daily. In Washington, DC, she worked for a series of trade journals and as the business and economics reporter for the UPI wire service. She then spent five years overseas as a foreign correspondent in Canberra, Australia, and was the only US reporter accredited to the Parliamentary Press Gallery. When she returned to the USA, she was the inaugural program director for the Australian and New Zealand studies program at Georgetown University.

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