Mon 16 Jun 2008
If you’re a newspaper reader, are the obits a part of the paper you read daily? Occassionally? Never?
If you read them, why?
If you don’t read them, why not? Does it simply not occur to you to bother, or do you actively avoid them?
And, given that Netcraft has confirmed the imminent death of the printed newspaper, will reading the obits go the way of the rest of print media? Will online obits have the same feel? How do you suppose the change in how people get their news will affect this niche issue in the years to come?
Posted by Josh Millard8 answers so far!
I’ve never read the “Irish Sports Pages” (as they are called in the Boston area sometimes), even when I was reading the dead-tree paper on a regular basis. It seems to be a generational thing to me — something your grandmother does.
When in Iceland I read them because they’re integrated into the main paper. In Providence they’re in the local section which rarely has very interesting stories so I generally skip over it. When I do however, I sometimes look at a couple of obits that look interesting. For a while at my job I had sort obits and then I would read them.
Also, in Iceland obits are very different from the single, short article one finds in the US. In Iceland everybody who wants to sends their own obituary to the newspaper which then prints the lot of them.
Nope, if it’s important that I know that they died, I’ll be notified.
I read the obits when I have a print version of The Economist. Because they are really well written little life histories - sometimes about oimportant people I really cared about, sometimes about people I had never heard of but turn out to be incredibily interesting or important.
I read the obits every day in my local fish wrapper, but never online. It would never occur to me to read them online, unless I were looking for a specific death announcement. But the dead-tree version is a part of my morning coffee routine along with the crossword and the sudoku. (Fuck the Jumble, though. Man, I hate the fucking Jumble.) I didn’t read them until people I know started dying, so I guess I’m old.
I don’t, way too depressing.
It seems to be a generational thing to me — something your grandmother does.
I think it’s more of an age thing. I remember when my parents started reading them about 10 years ago. You get to a certain age and there starts being a good chance you’ll see someone you know there every week or two.
Oh, yeah, I read The Economist’s obituaries every week. They’re almost always fine and interesting reading.
from time to time. nyt obits when they cover someone familiar, guardian obits because they often highlight someone intriguing but previously unfamiliar and economist obits because others suggested they rocked. I do also tend to check up on what tim weiner at the nyt does from time to time, though my primary interest is his intelligence community work. I just end up glancing at his obits.