7 Months of Obituaries

As a jumping off point:

In journalism, we recognize a kind of hierarchy of fame among the famous. We measure it in two ways: by the length of an obituary and by how far in advance it is prepared.

-Walter Cronkite

The chart:

The grey bars represent the ten longest obituaries of the last 7 months. From left to right, they are:

“A Star Idolized and Haunted, Michael Jackson Dies at 50″ (2839 words)
“Jack Nelson, an Investigative Reporter, Dies at 80″ (1266 words)
“Dominick Dunne, Writer Who Chronicled High-Profile Crime, Is Dead at 83″ (1966 words)
“Robert Rines, Inventor and Monster Hunter, Dies at 87″ (2839 words)
“Howard Unruh, 88, Dies; Killed 13 of His Neighbors in Camden in 1949″ (1304 words)
“Roy DeCarava, Harlem Insider Who Photographed Ordinary Life, Dies at 89″ (1485 words)
“Walter Cronkite, 92, Dies; Trusted Voice of TV News” (2968 words)
“Budd Schulberg, ‘On the Waterfront’ Writer, Dies at 95″ (1855 words)
“Henrich, Yankees Clutch Hitter, Dies at 96″ (1086 words)
“Bela Kiraly Dies at 97; Led Revolt In Hungary” (1136 words)

Notable outliers are:

Michael Jackson, receiving a 2839 word obituary at the age of 50 (Billy Mays is the other 50 year old). Jack Rose, the youngest recipient of a NYTimes obituary. Along with Michael Jackson, Walter Cronkite received a very long obituary that ran 50% longer than the two next longest obituaries.

Final Project (Shift/) Proposal

1. OverviewAn exploration of the NYTimes obituary to examine what is supposed to be the most notable people to have died on a given day. This very very short daily list is then contrasted against the much larger set of likely mundane, but certainly much more varied nation-wide set of newspaper obituaries. This exercise seeks to both bring attention to the large number of deaths that occur every day and find an alternative snapshot of what the American life is through its daily deceased.
2. DataMy data sets will be the NYTimes Article Search API (searching for “obituary”) + an RSS feeds from the site obituaries101.com located at http://www.big101.com/obituary_search_find_famous_death_notices.php.
3. Design QuestionsMy initial approach is to use scale and variation in type size to underline how small of a snapshot the NYTimes obituary section is of the greater body of obituaries in the United States. I’m not exactly sure if I will be using any graphics as text is a central part of this exploration.
4. Precedents
   • Rupa’s project, Out of Sight, Out of Mind, dealing with visualizing deaths and she was previously mentioning the use of bar graphs to identify spikes in casualties across time.
   • NPR did a radio show called The Art of the Obituary which revealed the behind-the-scenes process of identifying aging members of society of note and prewriting and subsequently updating obituaries. Hearing this story when it aired a number of years ago really piqued my interest in the topic of obituary writing.
   • Almost forgot the most striking infographic I’ve seen that related to death: the visualization of suicides on the Golden Gate Bridge: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2005/10/30/MNG2NFF7KI1.DTL&m=/c/pictures/2005/10/30/mn_suicide30_loc_tt.gif.