Digital Obits, 21st Century Style

Most journalists I know don't like to write obituaries. They regard the task as a chore, and so do many of their bosses.

The smartest editors I know taught me that obituaries are an insightful measure of any publication. The shoddy or boring ones reflect disdain for readers. But capture a person's significance upon his or her passing, convey it elegantly and skillfully to community friends and family -- and you've rung the bell.

Hayes Ferguson is a Chicago-based journalist and very accomplished in a non-conventional way. She's also the chief operating officer of Legacy.com, a digital business organized around the publication of obits. Legacy.com partners with hundreds of English-speaking newspapers to amass death notices on line, providing an electronic guestbook, tools for donations and the purchase of flowers and – most importantly – a permanent record of people's lives that replaces the yellowing clips tucked in untold dusty scrapbooks. The newspaper provides the obit, Legacy collects a fee for providing the on-line publication platform.

I know: Why didn't I think of that?

Legacy.com, partly owned by Tribune Co., has been archiving death records from the Social Security Administration, working toward a comprehensive record of every one of the 2.2 million or so people who die every year in the U.S. Soon you might be able to hear (or search) who died from your high school class, your college, home town, army unit, with a press of a button. Lots of clever ways to organize and present the data are waiting to be invented.

Digital ventures such as the one Ferguson supervises represent the latest chapter of the new journalism, as significant and remarkable as Tom Wolfe's "Electric Kool Aid Acid Test." Don't be surprised if an enterprising reporter soon writes an original, brilliant, important piece about death, drawn from the information and records gathered, sliced and diced by Legacy.com.

Ferguson started as a free-lance music reviewer. She worked at the New Orleans Times-Picayune, where her dad had been the top editor. Perhaps she once dreamed of winning a Pulitzer Prize.

Today's journalism is less about prizes, more about how emerging technology is defining journalists' careers.

Our New Lives as Journalists

          What would you do if the newspaper or magazine or TV station that employed you as a journalist no longer had enough money for your salary?  That's the situation, more or less, faced by hundreds if not thousands of bright, highly skilled reporters and editors. Some are quitting the profession, others are reinventing themselves in a variety of unusual ventures made possible by the Internet and digital technology. Several of the latter described their migration at the Knight-Wallace Fellows reunion in Ann Arbor on Saturday, Sept. 11.
          Rona Kobell left the Baltimore Sun earlier this year to work for the Chesapeake Bay Journal, a small monthly dedicated to mostly environmental issues. In an earlier chapter of her career, prior to the financial meltdown of dailies, Kobell would be covering the subject as an environmental specialist for the Sun. Some percentage of Sun readers -- maybe large, maybe small -- were interested in the environment and read the relevant stories. The Sun had no accurate idea how many or who they were.
          But with digital technology, identifying and reaching the specific readers who care passionately about the environmental health of Chesapeake Bay -- and will read a special-interest publication -- is becoming as cheap and simple as starting a Facebook page for fans of the Chesapeake Bay.
          Audiences for narrow subjects and special-interest publications have long existed -- but finding them, getting their email addresses, figuring out exactly in what form they want information, how much they might pay, how often they will read, has never been easier or as cost-effective.
         The Bay Journal isn't lucrative, at least not yet. As a non-profit publication it accepts federal money from an EPA interested in learning what the voters near the bay see, know and think -- a big conflict, as we were taught in journalism school. But Kobell is free to write what she wants, including articles critical of federal programs.
          A former reporter for the New Orleans Times Picayune, Hayes Ferguson, serves as chief operating officer of Legacy.com, an online venture that collaborates with newspaper websites to write and archive obituaries. Obits have always been a feature of the daily newspaper -- are they morphing into something entirely different, unimagined by an earlier generation of j-school professors?
          Watch out, Woodward and Bernstein -- the news biz is changing before our eyes.

Home Prices Can’t Improve Until We Swallow the Medicine

    Everyone wants home prices to start going up. Or at least stop going down. (Has anyone tried prayer? Don't laugh, it might work.)

    Between a quarter and a fifth of homes in the U.S. are worth less than their underlying mortgages. They're not worth what their owners, many of whom have lost their jobs, paid for them. If they were priced properly now – lower – they could be sold. But banks don't want to take the loss, nor do owners. The government is trying, in well meaning fashion, to keep owners in their homes with programs meant to prop up mortgages and make payments more "affordable."

    Putting off the inevitable only prolongs the pain. A healthier course would be for owners, lenders and the government to throw in the towel. Let prices fall to where someone with more money or less debt than you will buy your house. Those who give up their unaffordable houses can buy smaller ones. Or rent. Once existing housing is re-priced, homebuilders can figure out what buyers of brand new houses are prepared to spend. Carpenters and plumbers can return to the job. The economy will start looking up.

    

Dan Akerson's first day at the top of GM

Dan Akerson's first day at the top of GM