After finding out who is dead that day, they have seven or so hours to file their pieces before the print deadline. In many cases, the obituarists race the clock. (Ten to 15 people call the obit desk every day, asking to have their unremarkable grandfather written up.) But after checking the “morgue”-the Times archive filled with obituarizable old clips-the paper was delighted to memorialize this remarkable man, who was otherwise slipping into history’s abyss. In a particularly charming story, Kinzler’s family cold-pitched the Times, which initially didn’t believe them. Jack Kinzler, who saved Skylab, a billion-dollar space station, with a makeshift parasol. David Foster Wallace, whose dad the obituarist had to call on the day his son died. John Fairfax, the record-setting ocean oarsman, who attempted suicide by jaguar. The movie is structured around individual deaths and the obituaries that followed them. Slinky guy is never going to make it above the fold. But, of course, they are measures of newsworthiness: At the Page One meeting each afternoon (which is thrilling to watch), each desk pitches their stories.
The writers insist that the word-counts are not about placing a numerical value on the worth of a human life. “Literally, I show up in the morning and say, ‘Who’s dead?’”
