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.
我是艾咪•帕納尼, 負責《紐約時報》訃文的編輯。 或者,有些朋友會稱我為死亡天使。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
事實上,大家會問我: 「做訃文的工作, 時時刻刻想著死亡, 不會很讓人沮喪嗎?」 猜猜我怎麼回答他們? 訃文的重點不是死,而是生, 訃文是有趣的,讓人能體會的。 通常會寫一些你不知道的事。
Recently, for example, we had the obit for the inventor of the sock puppet.
比如,最近, 我們為襪子玩偶的發明者寫了訃文。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
大家都知道襪子玩偶, 但你們曾經想過是誰發明的, 他們的生活是什麼樣子的嗎? 訃文是極具新聞報導特色的文體。 也可說是種藝術形式。 它讓作者有機會 將一個人的人生故事 編織成美麗的描述。
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.
從 1851 年起, 《紐約時報》已經刊出了 數以千計的訃文。 對象包括元首、名人, 甚至那位將螺旋彈簧玩具 取名為 Slinky 的人。 只有一個問題。 只有一小部分的訃文 是在記錄女性和有色人種的人生。 出於這個動機, 我創立了叫做「被忽略」的計畫, 目的是幫被邊緣化的族群說故事, 他們從來沒有訃文。 這是個機會,讓報社能 重溫它 168 年的歷史, 為那些不論因為什麼理由 而被排除的人, 將間隙補起來。 這是個可以修正過去的錯誤的機會, 重新調整社會的焦點, 重新思考誰是重要的。
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?"
我是在 2017 年剛加入 訃文團隊時想出這個點子。 當時「黑命貴」活動 正如火如荼展開, 關於性別不平等的談話 又開始冒出來。 同時,我很納悶, 身為記者以及有色人種女性, 我要怎麼做才能協助 促進這種談話? 大家開始走出陰影, 說出他們遭遇到不公的故事, 我能感受到他們的痛苦。 我注意到,有時我們 會收到一些讀者來信, 說:「嘿,為什麼你們不多刋載 一些女性和有色人種的訃文?」 我心想:「是啊,為什麼不?」
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.
因為我才剛進入團隊, 我跑去問同事這件事, 而他們說:「現今過世的人, 在他們生活的年代, 女性和有色人種 不會被邀請一起創造不同。 也許再過一、兩個世代, 我們就會有更多女性 和有色人種的訃文。」 這答案一點也不讓人滿意。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
I wanted to know: Where are all the dead women?
我想要知道:死掉的 女性都到哪去了?
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
所以,我開始思考, 我們如何得知人的死訊? 排名第一的方式是由讀者提交。 所以,我心想: 「如果我們去看國際性的報紙 或搜尋社交媒體呢?」 大約在此時…… 我腦中好多想法在轉, 我剛好看了一個關於 瑪麗•奧特布里奇的網站。 1874 年網球被引入 美國是她的功勞。 我心想,哇,這是美國 最盛行的運動之一, 竟是由女性引入的? 有人知道這件事嗎? 《紐約時報》有刊她的訃文嗎? 警告,有雷——答案是沒有。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
接著,我開始納悶還漏了誰? 為此,我埋首到檔案資料庫中。 我找到一些驚喜。 先驅記者艾達•威爾斯 發起一個反私刑的活動。 出色的詩人希薇亞•普拉斯。 數學家愛達•勒芙蕾絲 如今被公認是首位電腦程式設計師。
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.
我回去告訴我的團隊: 「如果我們現在來說 她們的故事呢?」 花了一點時間大家才買帳。 你們知道的,大家都會擔心 報社可能會難堪, 因為它在第一次時沒有做對。 而且這樣做有點怪, 因為我們回頭看過去, 而不是報導現今的新故事。 但,我說:「各位, 我真的認為這很值得。」 一旦我的團隊看到了它的價值, 他們全都加入了。 所以,在十多名作家 和編輯的協助下, 我們在 2018 年 3 月 8 日發表, 推出十五位傑出女性的故事。
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.
雖然我知道我的團隊 所做的事很強大, 但我並沒有預期到 得到的反應也會同等強大。 我收到數百封電子郵件。 來信的人寫說: 「謝謝你們終於 給了這些女性聲音。」 來信的讀者寫說: 「我去上班的路上 邊讀這些故事邊哭, 因為這是我第一次 感到被看見了。 」 我的同事來信,寫說: 「我從沒想過,有色人種女性 會被允許在《紐約時報》 達成這樣子的成就。」 我還收到來自讀者的建議, 總共有大約四千個 我們可能忽略掉的人。 其中有一些是這個計畫中 我很喜歡的故事。
My all-time favorite is Grandma Gatewood.
我最愛的是蓋特伍德祖母。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
她被丈夫家暴了三十年後倖存下來。 有一次,他把她打到不成人形, 他甚至用帚柄打她的頭, 打到帚柄斷掉, 她的反應是朝他的臉丟麵粉。 但警察抵達的時候, 他們逮捕的是她,不是他。 市長到監獄去看她, 把她帶到他自己的家中, 直到她能再站起來。 接著,有一天,她讀到 《國家地理雜誌》的一篇文章, 提到沒有任何女性曾經 單獨健行走完過阿帕拉契小徑。 她說:「你知道嗎?讓我來吧!」 記者聽到風聲,得知 老祖母在健行穿越樹林。 在終點,他們問她: 「你是怎麼撐過 這麼困苦的地方?」 但他們不知道她之前 撐過怎樣的情況。
So, "Overlooked" has become wildly successful. It's becoming a TV show now, on Netflix.
所以,「被忽略」獲得廣大的成功。 它即將變成網飛上的電視節目。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
(Applause)
(掌聲)
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?
我等不及看到它推出了。 大概有二十五家出版商來找過我, 他們有興趣將「被忽略」 出版成書。 這一切都顯示,這個計畫 推出得多是時候,且多麼必要。 它也有提醒作用, 報紙記錄了我們的世界中 每天所發生的事, 我們得要確保 沒有重要的人被遺漏。 那就是何以回顧過去雖然有意義, 但我仍然不斷想著一個問題: 「訃文的未來是什麼—— 我要如何做到多元化?」 那是我最原始的問題,對吧?
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.
所以,為了開始回答這個問題, 我想要收集一些資訊。 我跑到紐約時報大樓 地下室之下再下兩層, 去檔案庫。 我們叫它停屍間。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
我向那裡的檔案管理員詢求指引。 他介紹我一本書, 叫做《紐約時報訃文索引》。 我們把書交給紐約宗譜協會, 他們協助將書做數位化。 接著,一位程式設計師寫了 一個程式來掃過所有的標題, 找出和性別相關的詞,例如 「先生」、「太太」、「女士」。 我們發現,從 1851 年到 2017 年, 只有 15% 至 20% 的訃文 是女性的訃文。 接著,我和一名程式設計師合作, 建造了一個多樣性分析工具。 這個名字很枯燥,但忍耐一下, 因為它很有幫助。 它能將訃文細分成每個月, 女性和男性,並計算百分比。 如果你覺得這聽起來沒什麼, 我以前的做法是這樣。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
所以我請程式設計師 把目標值寫進程式, 目標值是 30%。 從「被忽略」推出的 那一年,2018 年 3 月, 到 2019 年 3 月, 我希望能達成 30% 的訃文 是女性的訃文。 這是 168 年來我們 都沒有達到的數字, 我很高興告訴各位, 我們做到了——達到 31%。
(Applause)
(掌聲)
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.
那很棒,但還不夠。 接著,我們希望能達到 35%, 接著 40%,直到和男性平等。 接著,我希望能 再和這位程式設計師合作, 寫一個類似的工具來測量 有多少是有色人種的訃文。 我也想在「被忽略」計畫裡 納入有色人種男性, 而這也終於成真了,我們有個 特殊區塊「黑人歷史月」。 在這裡我們會訴說數十位 黑人男性和女性的故事。 同樣的,這也是很強大的體驗。 這些人當中有許多曾經是奴隸, 或是到那個世代才脫離奴隸制度。 當中許多人得要捏造自己的過去, 才能夠在人生中向前行。 他們的掙扎有著相同的模式, 一而再再而三地出現。
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.
比如,伊莉莎白•詹寧斯 努力爭取權力, 想要在紐約市乘坐 種族隔離的電車—— 一百年後,羅莎•帕克斯做了 同樣的事,只是換成公車。 這只是在提醒我們 現在有了多少進步, 以及還有多少有待我們去做。
"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.
「被忽略」還要納入 其他被邊緣化的人。 我們最近為程式設計師 艾倫•圖靈寫了訃文。 信不信由你,這位才子 從來沒有被刊上訃文, 即使他寫的程式在二次世界大戰中 破解了德國的加密訊息, 協助終結戰爭。 他反而因為性向, 以罪犯的身分死去, 他還被迫忍受化學閹割。
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.
偉大的事,像這個訃文計畫, 都很不容易。 當我努力試圖說服大家 這個計畫很值得推行時, 也遇到很多波折。 有些時候,我也會強烈懷疑自己。 我很納悶我是否瘋了 或是否孤立無援, 我該不該放棄? 當我看到這個計畫的反應, 我知道我並不孤單。 有好多人跟我有一樣的感受。
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.
沒錯,很少人會去思考訃文。 但如果你去試著思考訃文, 會發現它們是人生的證明。 它們是談論一個人在世界上 做了什麼貢獻的最後機會。 它們也是個例子, 說明社會重視什麼人。 一百年後, 會有人回顧過去, 看看我們的時代是怎樣的。 我很幸運,身為記者, 我能夠使用這種說故事的形式 來協助轉變說故事的方式。 我也讓一間有信譽的機構 能夠去質疑它自己的現況。 我希望我能一點一點 繼續進行這項工作, 繼續改變社會的焦點, 不要讓任何人被忽略。
Thank you.
謝謝。
(Applause)
(掌聲)