Life on the Death Beat

Obituary writing is more than a regular beat. The obit writer routinely explores the lives and worlds of a wide variety of people, from the famous to the infamous. And the writer isn't limited to writing a three-paragraph summary of a person's life followed by a list of survivors; obits these days can be long captions under photographs, front-page news stories, or 1,000-word feature articles about the deceased and the impact she had on the world. The variety of obits, and the challenge to the obit writer, is broader than ever.