Obituaries for young, living stars

On Tuesday this week (the morning of Heath Ledger's death), the San Francisco Chronicle published a story titled, "Debate rages over prewritten obituaries for young, living stars".  Ledger's tragic, unexpected death seems a case in point:

It's never been a secret that when people die after long and distinguished careers, the detailed obituaries that major news organizations seem to produce almost instantaneously were in fact written well in advance.

But now the news that the Associated Press has prepared an obituary for 26-year-old Britney Spears has put the spotlight on a debate within the business of reporting death: With people grabbing the celebrity spotlight at a younger age, and some of them living lives of obviously dangerous excess, is it time for news organizations to begin preparing for early exits from celebritydom's under-30 crowd?

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The AP has about 1,000 prepared obituaries in its files on a wide variety of public figures. Although most are on people over 70, Spears is not the only 20-something whose passing the news agency is ready for.

The Los Angeles Times has approximately 400 prepared obits as they are called, although they lean heavily toward much older newsmakers, said Jon Thurber, the paper's obituary editor. Spears is not among them.

"That isn't to say we don't do some prep work on certain (younger) figures who are at risk," he said.

But Thurber said it is too much of a guessing game to invest the time on a full obituary on someone who might turn their life around in the next year or so. He cited Robert Downey Jr. and Courtney Love as two prime examples of once-troubled people who seem to have worked through their problems.

At the same time, he said, there's no way to deal with the unpredictability of death.

"Who in the '60s," Thurber asked, "would have thought Keith Richards would have outlasted John Denver?"

Read more here.