A journalist's obituary that you'll be glad you read

Early in my journalism career, I wanted nothing more than to work for the Des Moines Register. Such was the worldview of a young reporter who attended college in Iowa and landed a few early jobs there. That aspiration sprung also from the stature of the Register. As geographically implausible as this might seem, the newspaper was nationally recognized for its work, highlighted by Pulitzer Prizes, its highly regarded Washington, D.C., bureau, and especially the clout gained from the outsized influence of the Iowa political caucuses every four years. During a presidential election cycle, there was no political reporter in America more important than the Register’s David Yepsen.

 I read the Register faithfully and exhaustively (including the sports section that was strangely but famously printed on peach-colored paper) because reading good journalism is essential to learning how to do it. I didn’t know at the time that a decline was coming a few years later when the Cowles family sold the paper to Gannett.

 One day, I spotted a rare, new byline. It belonged to a reporter named Ken Fuson. I had to read only a few more Fuson feature stories to realize the Register pulled its talent from a different stratosphere. He was a terrifically gifted storyteller. And that’s what everyone is affirming, sadly, in their eulogies. Ken Fuson’s funeral was Saturday. He was only 63.

 He ended his second tenure with the Register in 2008. A year ago, he learned he had liver disease. Knowing the prognosis, Fuson wrote his own obit, and the Register published it. You can read it here. It’s poignant. It’s hilarious. And it’s honest, as Fuson talks about the gambling addiction that he escaped only in the final decade of this life. If there’s one good thing about the industry shift from free to paid obits – another sacrifice of community service for money – it’s that courageous families who wish to do so can talk candidly about the demons of life that too often lead to destruction or tragedy. It’s not Too Much Information. If full disclosure motivates even one person to change, or even one family to intervene, then it’s a public service.

 Once again, the Des Moines Register offers inspiration, this time in a much more meaningful way.