Now, as the death toll in Covid-19 in Illinois approaches 2,000, 19 journalists are assigned to the task, and "we are preparing to add more people to the team," said editor Chrissy. Taylor. "Our goal is to do as much as possible."
Obituaries are growing across the United States as newspapers try to capture the magnitude of the losses caused by the pandemic. Articles honor individual lives through short stories, reports and special presentations. And in doing so, they convert Covid-19's death statistics into deeply human stories.
"People relate to stories more than statistics," said Claire McNeill, a reporter for the Tampa Bay Times.
From Florida to California and the midpoints, journalists and editors said they felt "honored" and "grateful" for writing about the lives of the virus.
"With all the talk about flattened curves, PPE, and out-of-stock test kits, coronavirus coverage may start to seem clinical. It's important to remember that this is a story of people who lost loved ones suddenly, tragically and heartbreakingly. " Seattle Times editor Michele Matassa Flores said.
The Seattle Times will launch a special series called "Lives Remembered" on its front page on Sunday. Instead of assigning full-time staff members to draft obituaries, around fifteen journalists intervene to write the stories in addition to their other missions.
In Detroit, the first feature film "Souvenirs" was released last Sunday. Detroit Free Press editor and vice president Peter Bhatia said he was modeled after the New York Times Portraits of Sorrow short obit collection after September 11.
"We have created a simple Google form for people to tell us about their relatives / friends and we have reporters to get details, photos, etc.," said Bhatia.
In Chicago, Christy Gutowski, who generally writes on children's well-being, criminal and social justice issues for the Tribune, is now the newspaper's senior reporter on his ever-expanding obituary team.
"I don't see it as a typical obit with a defined pattern," she said. "I write a life story to make sure the story remembers someone's loved one. These are not statistics or data."
Gutowski said the obit effort accomplishes three goals: honoring the victim, comforting his family, and helping the public understand the human toll of this health crisis. "It is an important public service," she said. "I feel like, in a small way, I am making a positive contribution at such a difficult and important time in the world."
Redeploy staff ... what's left
The obits team has also grown in New Orleans, a metropolitan area particularly affected by the virus. "We have redeployed staff to handle the volume increase, and they have done a great job in difficult circumstances for us and for Louisiana," said Peter Kovacs, editor of The Advocate in Baton Rouge, which serves the two metropolitan areas.
Circumstances are also dire in newsrooms, where journalists have grown accustomed to doing more with less after years of cutbacks and layoffs. Now, closed businesses are withdrawing their advertising and pushing media companies to institute pay cuts, holidays and layoffs in newspapers across the country.
At the Tampa Bay Times, where 11 journalists were laid off in March, the company's editor, Maria Carrillo, said the rotating journalists were working on a section called "Floridians lost to the coronavirus".
"The goal is to document every life lost in Florida," she said.
Stories are snapshots of broken life. Sheila Remley "loved to travel. In May she planned a cruise to Amsterdam". Luis Alpiste "used to wake his children up at midnight with a cake to celebrate their birthday". Thomas Minichillo "couldn't wait to get out of the rehab and go home. He said to his wife, 'I just want to go for a walk with you.'"
But the effort was complicated because the identification of the victims "was slow in coming," said Carrillo. Some forensic pathologists do not provide names. The newspaper therefore collaborates with other media in Florida and asks readers to send information on their loved ones.
McNeill of the Tampa Bay Times, who worked on a series on climate change before the pandemic, is now writing stories about the dead.
These obits "are not like the latest news or obituaries that I reported on the night shift, where I encountered a family in a singular case of pain after something like a shooting or an accident," McNeill said. "This sorrow was contained in a smaller universe, somewhat foreign to strangers. Now most of us exist in a suspended state of anxiety and panic, and the sorrow seems more universal, part of a wave part of our role is to keep people from becoming faceless in this wave. No death is impersonal. "
McNeill said that only one obit she wrote, about Rosemarie Gabriele, 71, "the first woman to die in one of our local counties", received a much larger response than dozens of "numbered stories" she wrote about the increasing toll death.
"Because we wrote about Rosemarie as her full personality, with her love of opera and her belief in God right next to her frustrating stubbornness, people connected to her," said McNeill.
"The stories are so intense"
Some readers have entered the description of Rosemarie's love story for Fox News, "finding fuel for their anger with the president, who was still playing down the virus when Rosemarie fell ill," she added. "More than anything, Rosemarie's family wanted everyone to continue to move around the world with a feeling of invincibility to wake up and become serious."
Families at this point have a variety of reasons for wanting to speak to reporters and to have their loved ones commemorated.
"The stories are so intense. Similar in many ways, the way people suffer for days at a time," said Gary Miles of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Normally, the newspaper's deputy sports editor, Miles now oversees the obits, organized under the title "The People We Lost". Four writers are dedicated to the project.
At the Inquirer and many other major metro newspapers, there has been a notable increase in paid obituaries, which are bought by families to pay homage to their loved ones. Last Sunday's Boston Globe contained 16 pages of notices, up from seven pages the same week a year ago.
"The volume of obituaries reflects how much Massachusetts has been hit by the coronavirus and captures the scope of history in our region in a very visceral way," said Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory. .
Obits are different - they are not bought. On the contrary, they are chosen by editors and journalists in order to capture stories about the lives of personalities. McGrory said journalists from around the world have been recruited to "write elegies about the dead, which we organize in groups about once a week."
Journalists also participated in the Los Angeles Times. Shani Hilton and Shelby Grad, assistant editors, said the goal was to have a public, searchable database of the deaths they document.
In Tampa Bay, McNeill noted that "writing about these victims is also a way to hold the authorities accountable. When healthcare gaps lead to epidemics and mixed messages are hurting efforts to slow the spread, telling the stories of the victims is one way to highlight the very important issues of this moment. "
