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Comment by shadowsun7 | Hacker News Reader

The New York Times has just released a 7 page obituary profiling the life and influence of Osama Bin Laden:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/02/world/02osama-bin-laden-ob...

It's a great read. I'm wondering how they pulled it off, though - did they have the copy for an obituary filed away, and pulled it out and edited when the news broke?

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Yep, that's exactly how obit departments at major media outlets operate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obituary#Media

Yup that's pretty much how they do obits, interestingly the Nobel Prize was created as a result of this policy when Alfred Nobel's obit was prematurely printed by the French press after his brother's death.

did they have the copy for an obituary filed away, and pulled it out and edited when the news broke?

Yes, that's how they do it.

It used to be that hilarity would ensue when people found news orgs' internal web servers exposed on the net. Don't recall it happening in awhile though. Guess they learned their lesson.

Big newspapers keep obits pre-written for people they know they're going to have to write an obit for. It's not difficult, since when someone famous dies you can write about their accomplishments, legacy, and whatnot while they're still alive, and keep a blank spot in the lede about how they died. And it's nice, because you can write a much better article when you have a lot of time.

But it can lead to some interesting firedrills when someone dies unexpectedly:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2009/06/michael_...

And sometimes the obituaries are pre-written many years in advance. Which leads to incidents like NYT's obit for Elizabeth Taylor, whose author died several years ago:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/movies/elizabeth-taylor-ob...

It's pretty common for them to have pre-written obituaries for famous people that are likely to die soon.

See: Debate over Britney Spears' Obituary

http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-01-22/news/17150316_1_hollyw...

Yes, newspapers keep obituaries of significant figures on file and updated.

Yes, newspapers have ready-to-go obits for important people on the shelf, ready for updating with death info for situations like this

Yes, apparently it's a common practice:

http://www.slate.com/id/2226505/

NPR keeps them filed in the research library. It's a surprising range of people who are kept on file.

Yes, it is common practice. Sometimes they accidentally publish some of this obituaries, which leads to some embarrassing situations :)

it's common practice for many media outlets to maintain "obituaries" of famous figures around the world before they die.

If i'm not mistaken, I think it was in 2008 where Bloomberg accidentally published Steve Job's obituary which sparked a rumour that he died even though he was perfectly healthy.

Odd, it says he was eaten by wolves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkhwiuRbOEE

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