Extra: "We don't write about death, we celebrate life" - the enduring power of obituaries
From our archives at Behind Local News, an inspiring story about the impact obituaries can have in local newsrooms
Hello,
Welcome to our Thursday Extra newsletter, where we look at a particular topic in depth.
This week, we’ve gone into the archives to share a really special feature with our Substack subscribers.
When DC Thomson, which runs news titles in the North of Scotland, began a radical transformation to attract 75,000 paying digital subscribers, it decided it needed to double down on a range of topics which would resonate with readers.
One of those topics was obituaries - and it’s an area which has gone from strength to strength since.
At the end of 2022, Lindsay Bruce, obituaries writer at the Press and Journal, wrot efor Behind Local News on what makes the job so special.
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Behind Local News
The chance to give obituaries a new future in local news was enough to tempt Lindsay Bruce back into local journalism. Winner of the specialist journalist of the year at the Women in Local News Awards in 2022, Lindsay writes for Behind Local News on how obituaries now have a place at the heart of local newsrooms in North Scotland once again…
Obituaries are a time-honoured tradition in our newspapers. For as long as our titles have reported the news we have also let our communities know that the great and the good have departed from us.
Our obituaries are a rich source of content, especially within the regions we cover where tradition and a sense of community remain strong.
In early 2021, when DC Thomson adopted a digital-first subscriber model, bringing new focus to its newsrooms, the question was asked: ‘What do our audiences want?’
Specialist mini-publishing teams were created, including an Obits team, and a few months into the newsroom transformation I relocated from England and re-entered journalism to work alongside Chris Ferguson.
Chris was The Courier’s former head of production but, like me, was lured back into writing because of the opportunity to build an Obits team that celebrated life and did justice to the stories of some of the most admired and cherished members of our communities.
As a two-person team solely dedicated to crafting this content across DCT’s daily news titles, it’s been our job to ‘tell the stories of those who made us’.
As simple as that sounds it’s not the quick-to-turn-around process that you have with hard news.
As a newcomer to the communities I write about, in practical terms it’s meant earning the trust of our readers and subscribers and forging new relationships with key community figures and funeral directors.
I’ve had to learn about our towns, villages and cities. The life story of a trawlerman wouldn’t perk the interests of a Perth reader the way it would someone in Fraserburgh. Likewise a jute mill worker may not light up a data dashboard for Aberdeen readers but would be well read in Dundee.
It’s also been important to recognise that while there is still a place for local dignitaries and those who would traditionally top the death notices with an in-paper obituary, digital media means we can storytell in different ways and for different people.
Through audio, bringing to life stories overlooked as obituaries in the past, adding video and utilising our archives we’ve graduated from a traditional formal obituary, more closely resembling a CV, to engaging stories that spark nostalgia and community pride, and which validate the loss being felt.
From church elders to retired sports personalities, groundbreaking women to those taken far too soon by illness, it’s been a joy to hear and re-tell stories that manage to uplift despite sadness.
We’ve reported the ‘behind the scenes’ tales of people who lost their lives following Covid and feel privileged to have got to know through the eyes of others some of our regions’ best loved people, albeit after their passing.
It’s not every day you’re sent footage of a tractor cortege for a beloved vet, but as our communities come to value the obituaries we share, we are increasingly a first port of call for those who want to make sure precious lives are fully celebrated.
It’s also been a pet project of mine to tell the stories of the people behind Aberdeen’s many memorial benches in our A Place To Remember series.
Whatever I thought this would yield has been far exceeded by the reality represented. Young people lost to accidents and suicide, family members suddenly taken, and just this week a lollipop lady who served the children of the city for 16 years.
As the New York Times documentary ‘Obit’ pointed out, what we do has very little, in fact, to do with death. In reality, we write about life.