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.