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Offbeat Obituaries Honor Loss With Levity (and Brutal Honesty)
Irreverent tributes filled with unvarnished truths and funny anecdotes, which run counter to more somber traditional obituaries, have gained attention for “how alive they feel,” a researcher said.
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As newsroom staffs have shrunk and newspapers have turned to paid obituaries, the way has been paved for more offbeat obituaries that can be funny and brutally honest, like this one from Florida in 2021.
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By
Johnny Diaz
April 28, 2026,
12:50 p.m. ET
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Before he died at age 90, Maynard Hirshon wrote and paid for his own short obituary, which appeared in The Tampa Bay Times in Florida in 2021.
“I will be remembered for a while by my family, all whose names I am by far too cheap too list and a few friends,” he wrote, as rendered in the published item. “I had a pretty good life, and everybody dies. Bye-bye.”
His quirky, unvarnished death announcement illustrates how obituaries, which were traditionally reported and written by newspaper staff members about notable people and local residents, have evolved.
As newsroom staffs have shrunk and newspapers have turned to paid obituaries, the way has been paved for more offbeat obituaries that can be funny and brutally honest.
The rise of paid obituaries may give people a sense of leeway to cut loose, said Kristen Hare, the director of craft and local news at the Poynter Institute,
a nonprofit journalism school and research organization
in St. Petersburg, Fla.
“Paid obits are still big business for newspapers, but funeral homes and publishers, including
Legacy.com
, have made it easier to skip them by submitting an obit directly to them,” she said.
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