Margalit Fox on Life, Death, and the Best Job in Journalism
Conversations with Tyler
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The History of Obituaries
The New York Times' obituary section is considered one of the most boring sections of any daily paper. It's charged with taking subjects from the cradle John Doe was born on January 1, 1900 to the grave. Obits turn out to be the most purely narrative genre in any daily newspaper. The reason we have these great leads, as we call them at the end, is that we are exploiting very happily this inherent narrative potential that is a news of it.
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