Journalism After Life: Obituaries as Metajournalistic Discourse

Metajournalistic discourse offers a valuable lens for understanding how journalists think about their work, delineate the boundaries of the field and stabilize the field amidst crisis. By considering the obituary as an artifact of metajournalism, this study aims to elaborate on how metajournalism reflects the lived experiences of journalists. This study undertakes a discourse analysis of a corpus of obituaries of journalists (n = 2571), collected from the Journalist Memorial Site, finding that when journalists were not associated with prestigious outlets, their authority tended to be rooted in community contributions—contributions which included journalism but did not center it within a journalist's personal identity. As an object of analysis, obituaries provide opportunity to understand the role of journalism across a journalists’ lifespan—as opposed to in reflection to news events—and an opportunity to consider the personal identity of journalists.