Writing About Life, on a Deadline

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On an afternoon in July, Clay Risen, an Obituaries reporter at The New York Times, got a call from William McDonald, the desk’s editor. Mr. McDonald told Mr. Risen to stop what he was doing: The Times had gotten word that Ivana Trump, the glamorous businesswoman and ex-wife of former President Donald J. Trump, had died unexpectedly at 73. Mr. McDonald needed Mr. Risen to start writing her obituary immediately.

Reporting a high-profile obituary from scratch, on a tight deadline, is an uncommon assignment for Mr. Risen. He is one of six full-time reporters on the desk who spend most of their time writing articles that fall into two groups: obituaries, prepared in advance, about still-living, notable people and obituaries about notable people whose deaths have been announced.

But every so often, someone like Ms. Trump dies and the desk doesn’t have an advance obituary prepared. (Ms. Trump died after falling down stairs.) In those instances, reporting suddenly becomes a race against time. The Times wants to be one of the first news outlets to publish an obituary online and, if possible, include the article in the next day’s newspaper.

“It really is drop everything,” Mr. Risen said. “Whatever you’re doing, set it aside. Go into a different mode right away,” he said.

And so the pressure begins. According to Mr. McDonald, the desk’s first focus is on publishing a few paragraphs online, confirming the person’s death, providing basic biographical information and adding a note to readers saying a full obituary will be appearing soon. Mr. Risen and the desk published an early version of their obituary for Ms. Trump about an hour after receiving reports of her death.

The article may grow over the next few hours, but those early paragraphs should mostly stay the same, Mr. Risen said, setting the tone for the writing and the reporting that follows.

Mr. McDonald said that out of the nearly 100 or so obituaries the desk publishes each month, typically only one of them is written on such a tight deadline. Although working under such circumstances isn’t ideal, he said, “it focuses the mind tremendously.”

Mr. Risen agreed. “What’s revealing to me,” he said, “is most of the time the first thing I write is what ends up working.”

Once the first few paragraphs are published online, the reporter will focus on writing the rest of the obituary, recounting important moments in the subject’s life and sometimes incorporating material contributed by other reporters or editors across the newsroom. In Ms. Trump’s case, Mr. Risen said, reporters in The Times’s Washington bureau and on the Metro desk who had covered Ms. Trump sent him nuggets of information that they thought might enhance her obituary.

With time to prepare an obituary in advance, said Neil Genzlinger, another Obituaries reporter, he can scour old newspaper articles about his subjects and any books they may have written.

“I’m a regular at my local library,” Mr. Genzlinger said. “I’m sure when they see me coming, they must say, ‘What’s he going to take out this time?’”

When it comes to writing obituaries on deadline, he may speed up his research process by reading only the introduction and the last chapter of an autobiography

Mr. Genzlinger aims to stay as focused and specific as he can in interviews. While he was working on deadline for an obituary in September 2021 about the comedian Norm Macdonald, who died from cancer, Mr. Genzlinger interviewed Lorne Michaels, the creator and executive producer of “Saturday Night Live,” where Mr. Macdonald performed for five seasons. Mr. Genzlinger asked Mr. Michaels what attracted him to Mr. Macdonald’s sense of humor, rather than a more general question, such as what Mr. Macdonald was like as a person.

Specific questions are a way to stay out of “cliché land,” Mr. Genzlinger said. “That’s how you get the really good anecdote.”

Mr. Genzlinger and Mr. Risen completely immerse themselves in a stranger’s life for a few hours. And then, suddenly, they finish. Around 5 p.m. Eastern time, just two hours after Mr. McDonald called Mr. Risen, Mr. Risen completed Ms. Trump’s full obituary, which came in at more than 1,800 words. The article was published on the front page of The Times’s first edition, which closes at 8 p.m. Eastern time.

“When it’s over, it’s like running a marathon,” Mr. Risen said. “I just felt exhausted. But in the same sense, feeling a real accomplishment.”