April 2009 Archives

Eleven significant people died yesterday.

At least, that is eleven people who the Metro felt were significant enough for us to know about.

These included a family in a car crash, a suicidal Welsh soap actress and superb writer JG Ballard.

Now, these weren't the only people who will have died yesterday, so what criteria means they make the headlines?

Death is without a doubt a massive part of the news business, from murders to accidents or celebrity funerals, I defy you to find a newspaper without at least one corpse within its first ten pages, even if it's not a fresh one.

Anniversaries of deaths, memorial services, tributes, they all make compulsive reading for those who cared about the passed-on.

And there it is - caring - if your audience care about whoever has shuffled off this mortal coil, they will read the piece. This doesn't mean the reader has to like the person in question - I imagine the eventual deaths of Charles Manson, Peter Sutcliffe and even Noel Edmonds will generate a fair amount of interest.

If the corpse was a celebrity in life then you've got an audience. If they empathise with the deceased, maybe see something of themselves, then you've also got a winner.

It is a sad truism, but apply it to yourself - are you more likely to read about a middle-class graduate stabbed while walking through a park in the nice part of town, or a teenage hoodie knifed in a gang conflict on a council estate? And be honest.

Of course there are other factors which turn a death from an unfortunate inevitability into a headline story. For example, was the demise untimely? Were the circumstances unusual? The success of the Darwin Awards shows that we will read about the death of a stranger if he fell down a well rescuing a chicken or chocked to death eating live ferrets.

So there you have it, if you want to make the headlines it's simple - just drop dead, but make sure you make something of your life before you do!