Chapter 10: Obituaries

The chapter talked about obituary writing as more of an artform than anything else. As the chapter puts it, "These obituaries are not formulaic pieces. They are life stories." I feel as though, as opposed to the way in which the book discusses some other forms of journalism, obituaries are approached in a slightly different way. Journalists are more careful and approach death in a much more cautious, sympathetic way. I found it interesting to read that there are certain journalists who devote their careers to writing obituaries. However, after thinking about it for awhile, it really didn't seem so strange. Devoting your life to perfecting how to tell how people lived their lives actually sounds like quite a respectable career path, actually.

One of the things I found most interesting when reading this chapter was that, even though it is described as more of an artform than we are used to hearing journalism described as, obituaries still have their very own structures and elements. For example, what makes a good obituary lead, as opposed to a normal lead. All in all, obituary writing is still just another form of "investigative reporting". The chapter talks about how obituary writers go about doing the research, and, ultimately, end up "reporting" on someone's life.