| |
| (Then follows a list of the |
|organizations of which he was a member |
|and the periodicals with which he was |
|connected.) |
| |
| He married Miss Mary Blank, daughter of|
|the president of Blank College, in 1879, |
|and she survives him. |
|--_New York Tribune._ |

The obituary usually ends with a list of surviving relatives--especially
children and very often the funeral arrangements are included. This is
the last paragraph of another obituary:

| His first wife, Mary V. Blank, died in |
|1872. Three years later he married Mrs. |
|Sarah A. Blank, of Hightstown, N. J., who|
|with four daughters, survives him. The |
|funeral will be held tomorrow at 11:30 |
|o'clock. The burial will be in the family|
|plot in Greenwood Cemetery. |

This is the standard form of the obituary which is followed by most
daily newspapers in fair-sized cities. The form is characterized by an
extreme conciseness and brevity and an absolutely impersonal tone. Very
rightly, an obituary is handled with a sense of the sanctified
character of its subject It offers no opportunity for fine writing or
human interest; it simply gives the facts as briefly and impersonally as
possible.

XIV

SPORTING NEWS

Division of labor on the larger American newspapers has made the
reporting of athletic and sporting events into a separate department
under a separate editor. The pink or green sporting sheets of the big
papers have become separate little newspapers in themselves handled by a
sporting editor and his staff and entirely devoted to athletic news,
except when padded out with left-over stories from other pages. Although
on smaller papers any reporter may be called upon to cover an athletic
event, in the cities such news is handled entirely by experts who are
thoroughly acquainted with all phases of the athletic sports about which
they write. The stories on the pink sheet enjoy the greatest
unconventionality of form to be seen anywhere in the paper except on the
editorial page. And yet, because athletic reporters are usually men
taken from