My name is Amy Padnani, and I'm an editor on the obituaries desk at the "New York Times." Or, as some friends call me, the angel of death.
Zovem se Amy Padnani, urednica sam u odjelu za osmrtnice u New York Timesu. Ili kako me neki prijatelji zovu, anđeo smrti.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
In fact, people will ask me, "Isn't it depressing, working on obituaries and thinking about death all the time?" But you know what I tell them? Obits aren't about death, they're about life, they're interesting, they're relatable. Often about something you never knew.
Zapravo, ljudi bi me pitali, "Nije li depresivno raditi na osmrtnicama i misliti na smrt cijelo vrijeme?" Znate li što im kažem? Osmrtnice ne govore o smrti, nego o životu, zanimljive su, s njima se možemo povezati. Često vam kažu nešto što ranije niste znali.
Recently, for example, we had the obit for the inventor of the sock puppet.
Nedavno, naprimjer, imali smo osmrtnicu za izumitelja lutke od čarape.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
Everyone knows what a sock puppet is, but have you ever thought about who created it, or what their life was like? Obits are a signature form of journalism. An art form, if you will. It's an opportunity for a writer to weave the tale of a person's life into a beautiful narrative.
Svatko zna što je lutka od čarape, ali jeste li ikada razmišljali o tome tko ju je stvorio ili kakav je bio život te osobe? Osmrtnice su prepoznatljiv oblik novinarstva. Pa i neki oblik umjetnosti. To je prilika za pisca da isplete priču o životu osobe u obliku lijepog narativa.
Since 1851, the "New York Times" has published thousands of obituaries. For heads of state, famous celebrities, even the person who came up with the name on the Slinky. There's just one problem. Only a small percentage of them chronicle the lives of women and people of color. That's the impetus behind a project I created called "Overlooked," which tells the stories of marginalized groups of people who never got an obit. It's a chance for the newspaper to revisit its 168-year existence and fill in the gaps for people who were, for whatever reason, left out. It's a chance to right the wrongs of the past, and to refocus society's lens on who is considered important.
Od 1851. godine New York Times je objavio tisuće osmrtnica. Za poglavare država, slavne osobe, čak i za osobu koja je izmislila ime za igračku Slinky. Ali postoji problem. Tek mali postotak osmrtnica bilježi živote žena i osoba nebijelih rasa. To je bio poticaj za projekt koji sam osmislila, a koji se zove "Previđeni", koji priča priče marginaliziranih skupina ljudi koji nikada nisu dobili osmrtnicu. To je prilika da novine preispitaju svoje 168-godišnje postojanje i popuni praznine za ljude koji su, iz različitih razloga, bili izostavljeni. To je prilika da se isprave nepravde iz prošlosti i da se promijeni pogled društva na to koga bi trebalo smatrati važnim.
I came up with the idea when I first joined Obituaries in 2017. The Black Lives Matter movement was at a rolling boil, and the conversation on gender inequality had just started bubbling up again. And at the same time, I wondered, as a journalist and as a woman of color, what could I do to help advance this conversation. People were coming out of the shadows to tell stories of injustices that they had faced, and I could feel their pain. So I noticed we would get these emails, sometimes, from readers, saying, "Hey, why don't you have more women and people of color in your obituaries?" And I thought, "Yeah, why don't we?"
Došla sam na ovu ideju kada sam se pridružila odjelu osmrtnica 2017. godine. Pokret "Crnački životi su bitni" bio je na vrhuncu, a razgovor o spolnoj nejednakosti se opet počeo zahuktavati. U isto vrijeme, pitala sam se, kao novinarka i nebijela žena, što mogu učiniti kako bih pridonijela ovom razgovoru. Ljudi su izlazili iz sjene kako bi pričali o nepravdama na koje su nailazili i mogla sam osjetiti njihovu bol. Primijetila sam kako bi mi povremeno stizali emailovi od čitatelja govoreći, "Zašto nema više žena i osoba nebijelih rasa u vašim osmrtnicama?" Pomislila bih, "Da, zašto?"
Since I was new to the team, I asked my colleagues, and they said, "Well, the people who are dying today are from a generation when women and people of color weren't invited to the table to make a difference. Perhaps in a generation or two, we'll start to see more women and people of color in our obituaries." That answer just wasn't satisfying at all.
Kako sam bila nova u odjelu, pitala sam kolege, a oni su rekli, "Pa, ljudi koji danas umiru dolaze iz generacije kada žene i osobe nebijelih rasa nisu bile dobrodošle pridonositi društvu. Možda za jednu do dvije generacije počnemo viđati više žena ili osoba nebijelih rasa u našim osmrtnicama." To uopće nije bio zadovoljavajuć odgovor.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
I wanted to know: Where are all the dead women?
Željela sam znati: gdje su sve te mrtve žene?
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
So I started thinking about how we hear about people who have died, right? Number one way is through reader submissions. And so I thought, "Well, what if we were to look at international newspapers or scour social media?" It was around this time when ... Everything was swirling in my mind, and I came across a website about Mary Outerbridge. She was credited with introducing tennis to America in 1874. And I thought, wow, one of the biggest sports in America was introduced by a woman? Does anyone even know that? And did she get a New York Times obituary? Spoiler alert -- she did not.
Pa sam počela razmišljati kako saznamo za ljude koji su umrli, je li? Jedan način je putem prijave čitatelja. Pa sam mislila, "Što ako pogledamo u svjetske novine ili pročešljamo društvene mreže?" Otprilike u to vrijeme... Sve mi je to vrvjelo u glavi i naišla sam na web stranicu o Mary Outerbridge. Ona je bila zaslužna za dovođenje tenisa u Ameriku 1874. godine. Pomislila sam, wow, jedan od najvažnijih sportova u Americi uvela je žena? Zna li to itko? I je li ona dobila osmrtnicu u New York Timesu? Iznenađenje -- nije ju dobila.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
So then I wondered who else we missed. And it sent me on this deep dive through the archives. There were some surprises. The pioneering journalist Ida B. Wells, who started the campaign against lynching. The brilliant poet Sylvia Plath. Ada Lovelace, a mathematician now recognized as the first computer programmer.
Pitala sam se koga smo još izostavili. Što me poslalo u dubok zaron kroz arhive. Bilo je iznenađenja. Jedna od prvih novinarki Ida B. Wells, koja je započela borbu protiv linča. Briljantna pjesnikinja Sylvia Plath. Matematičarka Ada Lovelace, priznata kao prva računalna programerka.
So I went back to my team and I said, "What if we were to tell their stories now?" It took a while to get buy-in. There was this concern that, you know, the newspaper might look bad because it didn't get it right the first time. It was also a little weird to sort of look back at the past, rather than cover news stories of our day. But I said, "Guys, I really think this is worthwhile." And once my team saw the value in it, they were all in. And so, with the help of a dozen writers and editors, we launched on March 8, 2018, with the stories of 15 remarkable women.
Vratila sam se svom timu i rekla, "Kako bi bilo da sada ispričamo ove priče?" Potrajalo je dok se ideja nije primila. Postojala je zabrinutost, znate, novine bi se moglo prikazati u lošem svjetlu zato što nismo učinili pravu stvar u odgovarajuće vrijeme. I bilo je malo čudno gledati u prošlost umjesto pratiti dnevne priče. Ali rekla sam, "Doista mislim da je ovo vrijedno." I kada je i moj tim uočio tu vrijednost, svesrdno su to prihvatili. I tako smo, uz pomoć 12-ero pisaca i urednika, otpočeli projekt 8. ožujka 2018. godine pričama o 15 iznimnih žena.
And while I knew that the work my team was doing was powerful, I didn't expect the response to be equally powerful. I had hundreds of emails. They were from people who said, "Thank you for finally giving these women a voice." They were from readers who said, "I cried on my way to work, reading these stories, because I felt seen for the first time." And they were from colleagues of mine, who said, "I never thought a woman of color would be allowed to achieve something like this at the 'New York Times.'" I also got about 4,000 reader submissions suggesting who else we might have overlooked. And some of those are my favorite stories in the project.
Znala sam da je rad mog tima prodoran, ali nisam očekivala da će dobiti podjednako snažne reakcije. Primala sam stotine mailova ljudi koji bi rekli, "Hvala što ste napokon dali glas ovim ženama." Od čitatelja koji bi rekli, "Plakala sam na putu do posla čitajući te priče jer sam se prvi put osjetila primijećenom." Bili su od kolega koji bi rekli, "Nikada ne bih pomislio da bi nebijeloj ženi bilo dozvoljeno da postigne ovako nešto u New York Timesu." Dobila sam i oko 4 tisuće prijava čitatelja predlažući koga smo još vjerojatno izostavili. Ovo su neke od mojih najdražih priča iz ovog projekta.
My all-time favorite is Grandma Gatewood.
Najdraža mi je Baka Gatewood.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
She survived 30 years of domestic violence at the hands of her husband. One day, he beat her so badly, beyond recognition, he even broke a broomstick over her head, and she threw flour in his face in response. But when the police arrived, they arrested her, not him. The mayor saw her in jail and took her into his own home until she could get back on her feet. Then, one day, she read this article in "National Geographic" about how no woman had ever hiked the Appalachian Trail in its entirety alone. And she said, "You know what? I'm going to do it." Reporters caught wind of the old grandma who is hiking through the woods. And at the finish, they asked her, "How did you survive so rough a place?" But they had no idea what she had survived before that.
Preživjela je 30 godina obiteljskog nasilja od svog supruga. Jednog dana ju je tako gadno prebio, do neprepoznatljivosti, čak je slomio držač od metle na njezinoj glavi, a ona mu je bacila brašno u lice kao odgovor na to. Ali kada je došla policija, uhitili su nju, a ne njega. Gradonačelnik ju je posjetio u zatvoru i odveo je u svoj dom dok se nije oporavila. Jednog dana pročitala je članak u National Geographicu kako nijedna žena dotad nije prehodala Apalačijansku stazu u cijelosti sama. Rekla je, "Znate što? Ja ću to učiniti." Izvjestitelji su čuli za baku koja hoda šumama. Na kraju su je pitali, "Kako ste uspjeli preživjeti na tako grubom mjestu?" Ali nisu imali pojma što je preživjela prije toga.
So, "Overlooked" has become wildly successful. It's becoming a TV show now, on Netflix.
"Previđeni" su postali iznimno uspješni. Uskoro će postati TV-emisija na Netflixu.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
(Applause)
(Pljesak)
I cannot wait to see this thing come to life. Something like 25 different publishers have reached out to me with interest in turning "Overlooked" into a book. All of this clearly shows how timely and necessary this project is. It's also a reminder of how newspapers document what's happening in our world every single day, and we have to make sure not to leave out key people. That's why, even though it's been so meaningful to look back in the past, I'm plagued with the lingering question: "What about the future of obituaries -- how do I diversify those?" That was my original problem, right?
Jedva čekam da vidim kako ova stvar postaje živom. Oko 25 različitih izdavača me je kontaktiralo sa zanimanjem da pretvore "Previđene" u knjigu. Sve ovo jasno pokazuje kako je projekt pravovremen i potreban. Također služi kao podsjetnik kako novine bilježe događaje u svijetu svakog pojedinog dana, a mi moramo osigurati da ne izostave ključne osobe. Zbog toga, iako je bilo toliko značajno pogledati u prošlost, proganja me pitanje: "Što je s budućnošću osmrtnica -- kako ih možemo učiniti raznovrsnijima?" To je bio moj prvotni problem, zar ne?
So to start answering this question, I wanted to gather some information. I went down to the sub-sub-basement level of the New York Times Building, to the archives. We call it the morgue.
Kako bih odgovorila na to pitanje, htjela sam skupiti neke podatke. Otišla sam nekoliko razina ispod podruma zgrade New York Timesa, u arhive. Mi to zovemo mrtvačnicom.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
And I asked for some guidance from our archivist there. He pointed me to a book called "New York Times Obituaries Index." So we handed it to the New York Genealogical Society, and they digitized it for us. And then a programmer wrote up a program that scanned all those headlines for "Mr.," Mrs.," "Lady," "Sir," all the sort of gender-defining terms. And what we found was that from 1851 to 2017, only about 15 to 20 percent of our obits were on women. So next, I worked with a programmer to build this tool, called the diversity analysis tool. It's a very dry name, but bear with me, it's super helpful. It breaks down the percentage of our obits month to month, women to men. OK, if that doesn't sound like much to you, this is how I used to calculate it before.
Zatražila sam ondje pomoć od našeg arhivista. Pokazao mi je knjigu "Indeks osmrtnica New York Timesa". Ustupili smo je njujorškom Genealoškom društvu koji su je digitalizirali za nas. Programer je napisao program koji bi pretražio sve naslove tražeći "Gosp.", "Gđa", "Dama", "Gospodin", sve te spolno određene nazive. Otkrili smo da je od 1851. do 2017. godine samo 15 do 20 posto osmrtnica bilo objavljeno ženama. Zatim sam radila s programerom da napravimo alat zvan alat za analizu raznovrsnosti. To je vrlo suhoparan naziv, ali vjerujte mi, vrlo je koristan. Razlaže postotak naših osmrtnica mjesec za mjesecom, žene naspram muškaraca. Ako vam to ne predstavlja mnogo, ovako sam to izračunavala ranije.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
So I asked this programmer to program in a goal, and that goal was 30 percent. From the year of "Overlooked's" launch, March of 2018, to March of 2019, I was hoping we could get to 30 percent of our obits on women. It was a number we hadn't achieved in a 168 years, and I'm happy to say we did it -- we got to 31 percent.
Zamolila sam programera da programira unutar cilja, a taj cilj bio je 30 posto. Od godine početka "Previđenih", ožujka 2018. godine, do ožujka 2019. godine, nadala sam se da ćemo dobiti 30 posto osmrtnica ženama. Taj broj nismo uspjeli dostići 168 godina i sretna sam što vam mogu reći da smo to postigli - 31 posto.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)
It's awesome, but it's not enough. Next we're hoping to get to 35 percent, and then 40 percent, until we achieve parity. And then I'm hoping to partner with this programmer again, to build a similar tool to measure people of color in our obits. That was something I wanted to do with "Overlooked" too, to include men of color, and I finally got to do it with a special section for Black History Month, where we told the stories of about a dozen black men and women. Again, it was a really powerful experience. Many of these people had been slaves or were a generation removed from slavery. A lot of them had to make up stories about their past just to get ahead in life. And there were these patterns of their struggles that came up again and again.
To je sjajno, ali to nije dovoljno. Nadamo se postići 35 posto, a zatim 40 posto, sve dok ne dostignemo ravnopravan odnos. Zatim se nadam da ću se ponovo udružiti s ovim programerom da izgradimo sličan alat kako bismo izmjerili nebijele ljude u osmrtnicama. To sam htjela također učiniti s "Previđenima", uključiti nebijele muškarce, i konačno sam to uspjela učiniti u posebnom odjeljku za Mjesec crnačke povijesti, gdje smo ispričali priče dvanaestak crnaca i crnkinja. Opet, bilo je to snažno iskustvo. Mnogi od tih ljudi bili su robovi ili generacija nakon ukidanja ropstva. Mnogi su morali izmisliti priče o svojoj prošlosti samo kako bi se probijali kroz život. Postojale su šablone njihovih borbi koje su se počele pojavljivati.
Elizabeth Jennings, for instance, had to fight for her right to ride on segregated street cars in New York City -- a hundred years before Rosa Parks did the exact same thing with buses. It was just a reminder of how far we've come, and how much more we still have left to do.
Primjerice, Elizabeth Jennings morala se boriti za pravo da se vozi u rasno odvojenim tramvajima grada New Yorka -- stotinu godina prije negoli je Rosa Parks učinila isto s autobusima. To je samo podsjetnik koliko smo napredovali i koliko puno toga još moramo učiniti.
"Overlooked" is including other marginalized people as well. Recently, we had the obit for the computer programmer Alan Turing. Believe it or not, this brilliant man never got an obituary, even though his work decoding German messages during World War II helps end the war. Instead, he died a criminal for his sexual orientation, and he was forced to endure chemical castration.
"Previđeni" uključuju i ostale marginalizirane ljude. Nedavno smo imali osmrtnicu za računalnog programera Alana Turinga. Vjerovali ili ne, ovaj briljantni čovjek nikada nije dobio osmrtnicu, iako nam je njegov rad na dešifriranju njemačkih poruka tijekom Drugog svjetskog rata pomogao da okončamo rat. Umjesto toga, umro je kao kriminalac zbog svoje spolne orijentacije i bio je prisiljen na kemijsku kastraciju.
Great things, like this obits project, do not come easily. There were a lot of fits and starts as I worked hard to convince people it was worth getting it off the ground. There were moments when I faced great self-doubt. I wondered if I was crazy or if I was all alone, and if I should just give up. When I've seen the reaction to this project, I know I'm not at all alone. There's so many people who feel the way I do.
Velike stvari, poput ovog projekta osmrtnica, ne ostvaruju se lako. Bilo je puno uspona i padova dok sam naporno radila da uvjerim ljude da ga vrijedi postaviti na noge. Bilo je trenutaka kada sam se suočavala s velikom sumnjom u sebe. Pitala sam se jesam li luda ili jesam li sama u ovome, trebam li jednostavno odustati. Kada sam vidjela reakcije na projekt, znala sam da uopće nisam sama. Toliko je ljudi koji se osjećaju poput mene.
And so yeah, not many people think about obituaries. But when you do, you realize they're a testament to a human life. They're the last chance to talk about somebody's contribution on the world. They were also an example of who society deemed important. A hundred years from now, somebody could be looking into the past to see what our time was like. I'm lucky, as a journalist, to have been able to have used this form of storytelling to help shift a narrative. I was also able to get an established institution to question its own status quo. Little by little, I'm hoping I can keep doing this work, and continue refocusing society's lens so that nobody else gets overlooked.
Da, ljudi ne razmišljaju previše o osmrtnicama. Ali kada razmišljate, shvatite da su one svjedočanstvo ljudskog života. One su posljednja prilika da pričamo o nečijem doprinosu ovom svijetu. Također služe kao primjer za to koga naše društvo smatra važnim. Za sto godina netko bi mogao gledati u prošlost da vidi kakvo je bilo naše doba. Imam sreću da kao novinarka mogu koristiti ovaj način pričanja priča kako bih promijenila narativ. Uspjela sam postići da ugledna institucija preispita svoj status quo. Korak po korak, nadam se da ću moći nastaviti ovaj posao i nastaviti preusmjeravati pogled društva, kako nitko više ne bi ostao previđen.
Thank you.
Hvala.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)