The depictions of trauma and death by news workers historically was the topic of this study by Will Mari from Louisiana State University. The role of organizational culture in shaping reflections and depictions of trauma was investigated, and the evolution in norms can be explained by the internal work culture. 

In the first half of the 20th century, deaths in work, “dying in harness” were seen as noble and celebrated, even if they nonetheless were traumatic events for everyone in the newsroom. Thus, trauma was ever-present in the newsroom, and the obituaries showcase it. 

For long, it has been typical for journalists to deal with trauma in unhealthy ways, but the material and affective turn in journalism scholarship has recognized lived experiences and has looked at how news workers engage with their labor amidst changes, including traumatic events. 

Roughly 12,000 articles from Editor & Publisher, and 500 issues from Quill, and 480 issues of Columbia Journalism Review were read as part of the representative sample, but ultimately, only a smaller amount (N=84) of articles from the 1920s to 1960s, with a few outliers from 1910s, 1970s and 1980s, were examined. 

Many of the obituaries mentioned the journalist’s work ethic, and mentioning death at work, “dropping dead” at the desk, and gallows humor was not unheard of, or nostalgia – or both. Sometimes the shorter obituaries were not written particularly sensitively. 

Deaths at the work held special meaning to at least some of the readers of trade magazines, being idealized by some. Papers like Quill reflected wistfully on the “good old days” of 1920s and 1930s, when journalists died “in harness”.

They also sometimes worked as meta-journalistic discourse, referring to the work and characteristics of the dead person, and there was a sense that a journalist may “die” even by having their career stagnate – and in this sense also, “dying in harness” was idealized.

 As time went on, the more colorful phrases in obits such as “dropped dead” or “dying in harness” became rarer, even if the phrases persisted generally in the magazines in other contexts. One complicating factor in the obituaries written by the professional journalistic writers is their unwillingness to insert themselves in the story in any way. 

In conclusion, the author notes that most obits were written for the living, to showcase what a career in journalism can be like. They were mainly written for the peers and provided reassurance that in the end the careers would be noticed at least by other journalists.

The article ““Dying in harness:” How news workers’ obituaries in the 20th century served as meta-journalistic discourse about trauma and coping” by Will Mari is in Journalism. (Free abstract).

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