Who rates an obituary in the Chicago Tribune?
For an obit in the New York Times, one must enjoy proximity to power, fame, wealth, or the newspaper’s office. To garner a handsome write-up in a local newspaper, one need only have lived in the community. The Trib falls somewhere in between.
Unsurprisingly in the second-largest archdiocese in the world, Roman Catholic led the entries in specified religions. Protestants took second place, followed closely by Jews, who had 9 percent of the large obits and 12 percent of the small ones. The biggest category was “unspecified”: 58 percent of hed obits and 35 percent of regular obits did not give any religious affiliation.
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Also frequently missing–from 89 percent of squiblets and 58 percent of biggies–was the cause of death. Cancer and heart problems were the leaders where a cause was given, most frequently in obits supplied by the wire services. AIDS was given as a cause in 3.2 percent of hed obits, but only 0.22 percent of small ones.
“When I got the job, I was horrified,” says Heise, a friendly one-time seminarian who obviously cares about his work. “I said, ‘I don’t read them–why would I want to write them?’ But I said I would do it if they would let me make some changes in the way the obituaries were written.
He also likes to run obituaries for centenarians, most of whom are women, and for Tribune employees. “People work at the Tribune for 30, 40 years, cleaning or operating the presses, and they never get any recognition. I go out of my way to do those.” He also goes out of his way to include blacks, Latinos, and Arab Americans, all of whom are underrepresented in the obit pages. “We go fishing for those. My hope is that people will see them and then be more likely to send information to us.”
Heise’s efforts are to be applauded, but his bosses could find some better way to arrange the obit pages. For starters, they ought to be reserved for obituaries, death notices, and related items–not for articles about suburban politics and the latest in the Willie Lloyd saga. Move the Almanac feature (surely there’s room in the want ads, next to “Pluggers,” for instance) and keep every inch of the pages for relevant material. If space is available there should be more obits.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Yael Routtenberg.
