Remembering Jim Sheeler, obit writer extraordinaire

"Focusing on local people whose stories have never been told is one of the few things we have left," he argued. "It's something that absolutely should be expanded, and something that readers would pick up the paper for. It's not something you can do in a three-inch brief on the web."

‘New York Times’ Obit Writer Margalit Fox Retires

In the summer of 1994, I joined The Times as a copy editor on the Sunday Book Review. It was a marvelous section, awash in smart, lively colleagues and enticing, tottering stacks of books. But I pined for a writing job, and as my years on the copy desk wore on, I feared my own epitaph would say little more than “She changed 50,000 commas into semicolons.” (H/T Peter Elikann)

Via the 'New York Times': From an Obit Writer, the Last Word on ‘The Last Word’

In her next life, Shirley MacLaine may come back as a movie critic — you never know. If she does (or even if she doesn’t), she won’t likely look back on “The Last Word,” released this month, as a current-life highlight.

NYT obit writer on how the game is played

Bruce Weber — not that Bruce Weber — has spent more than eight years writing obituaries for The New York Times. Last week, he wrote his own farewell, penning a story on his resignation from the paper. The journalist, who joined The Times as a staff editor for the Sunday magazine section in 1986, caught up with WWD to talk about his most memorable stories, how he approaches writing about the dead, and whether his departure is indicative of a larger obit for print media. (H/T Stuart Elliot)

NYT obit writer takes his leave

No sense in burying the lede. This week, after more than eight years of lively habitation in one of journalism’s more obscure corners, I’m making a final egress, passing on. Starting after Friday’s deadline (ha!) I am an ex-obit writer.

5 tips for writing a great obit

Most obituaries are about as warm as a cover letter. Maybe every obit-writer feels she has to be sober and staid out of respect for the dead, but the result is that a complex life of loving, striving, petty thieving, and instagramming is reduced to a bland list. Not in the case of Harry Weathersby Stamps. Harry’s obituary in the Biloxi Sun-Herald is a remarkably tongue-in-cheek piece of writing that undoes the genre. In capturing the qualities that made Harry precisely this Harry and no other, it snapshots a gentleman both familiar and unusual—and by all accounts well worth knowing. His character is so tangible that it’s hard to believe we didn’t know him, that he didn’t write this himself, and that he’s gone. Harry is so charmingly portrayed that writers, in particular, should look again: there’s a wealth to be learned from this essay. Here are five tips and tricks for writers courtesy of the world’s best obituary.

Another way to look at luxury ...

Since I have the luxury of a terminal illness and the experience of having been an obituary writer I have chosen to write my own obituary.

(H/T to Jan Peterson!)