Celebrity Obituary: Oprah Winfrey

The following was written for an assignment for a class called "Advanced Journalism" in Spring 2021.

Please note there were certain formats and content criteria for this assignment.

In this particular assignment, I had to write an obituary for a celebrity who was still alive, as they are often written before their actual passing.

OPRAH WINFREY, TALK SHOW HOST, AUTHOR, AND PHILANTHROPIST.

The Oprah Winfrey Show is a talk show phenomenon cultivated by Oprah Winfrey over the past twenty years. In an hour-long interview with the Academy of Achievement in 1991, she explained her transition from radio to television and how she came to host the popular talk show based in Chicago.

“I only came to host a talk show because I had failed at the news and I was going to be fired,” she said. “Because they had no place else to put me, they put me on a talk show in the morning.”

After the show gained enough traction they changed the name from AM Chicago to The Oprah Winfrey Show.

In her interview with the Academy of Achievement, Winfrey explains how her Acting had always appealed to her. She said in her interview with the Academy of Achievement she says it was because of the ability to express another’s life.

“If you can internalize, and then manifest externally the essence of another being, that is the ultimate understanding,” she said.

Her first film was “The Color Purple” which was released in 1985 and directed by Steven Spielberg. Winfrey had read the 1982 novel by Alice Walker, on which the movie is based, and she loved it so much that she passed out copies to all her friends and family-- as well as strangers on the street, according to her interview.

“... I felt so intensely that I had to be a part of that movie. I really do believe I created it for myself. I wanted it more than anything in the world, and would have done anything to do it.”

She was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress in The Color Purple in 1986.

Winfrey, born Oprah Gail Winfrey in Kosciusko, Mississippi, lived in poverty for most of her early life. Eventually, she and her young single mother moved to Milwaukee where she was molested by her mother’s new boyfriend for the rest of her childhood and some of her teen years.

During this time, the media conglomerate was labeled as a troublemaker. Her mother threatened to send her to juvenile detention when she ran away

at age thirteen. Eventually, she was sent to live with her father who worked as a barber in Tennessee.

In a 1986 interview with the New York Times, Winfrey said, “My past has made me stronger. Not getting the attention from my mother made me seek it in other places, the wrong places until my father came and got me... His discipline channeled my need for love and attention into a new direction.”

While in high school, Winfrey won an Elks Club Oratorical contest and received a full scholarship to Tennessee State University where she earned a

bachelor's degree in Speech and Drama. Winfrey worked at a Nashville radio station during high school before becoming an anchor for WTVF-TV at age nineteen.

Winfrey has been engaged in a long-term partnership with Stedman Graham since 1986. Graham proposed in 1993 and Winfrey said yes but they followed through with the ceremony.

In an article Winfrey wrote for her magazine, O, the Oprah Magazine, she writes about why she and Graham chose a “spiritual relationship."

“I wanted to know how he felt I was worthy of being his missus but I didn’t want the sacrifices, the compromises, the day-in-day-out commitment required to make a marriage work. My life with the show was my priority, and we both knew it,” she wrote. “He and I agreed that had we tied the marital knot, we would not still be together.”

She says the relationship works because they each have their own identities and lives.

In 2009, Forbes named Winfrey “one of the most lucrative brands in the world”, in their article entitled “The Wealthiest Black Americans,” which listed 20 self-made entrepreneurs. Her net worth of $2.7 billion made her the only billionaire on the list.

One of the ways Winfrey has made such an impact is with her generosity to others. She made many notable charitable donations in her life but most of her donations went to the three foundations she started to help those in need.

Winfrey founded the Angel Network in 1988 on the basis of public charity. It initiates and supports charitable projects and provides grants to nonprofit organizations. It funded projects like rebuilding the Gulf Coast and the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls which was a school in South Africa. The Oprah Winfrey Foundation is funded by an endowment and provides grants to various not-for-profit organizations.

In 2004, Winfrey was interviewed by BusinessWeek’s Michelle Conlin where she talked about her charity work.

“I have a blessed life, and I have always shared my life’s gifts with others,” she said. “So, I will continue to use my voice and my life as a catalyst for change, inspiring and encouraging people to help make a difference in the lives of others.”