About seven years ago, a friend of mine whose brother was a producer at a cable news channel told me about one of the jobs they had interns do: prepare footage of celebrity obituaries before the celebrities had actually died. Older and more important celebrities got priority. (He noted that there were, oddly, no preparations for Ringo Starr.)
I’d forgotten all about this until earlier this year, when I heard a rumor that Britney Spears’ obituary had already been written by the Associated Press. Just recently, I found this great story by the obits editor of the Washington Post, which tells the story of Joseph Yeardley “J.Y.” Smith. Although Smith died in 2006, he filed plenty of “advanced obituaries” and is still getting his name in the Post on occasion.
Much more disturbing to me than the Britney Spears fiasco was finding the Wikinews page of Sen. Edward Kennedy’s obituary, still in the works. And, at least on Wikinews, obituaries aren’t the only bit of “prepared news.” The list of “Prepared stories” reads like a list of stories from parallel universes:
-Flash floods hit mainland Britain
-Microsoft’s social network platform goes Live
And one from the “They can go ahead and publish this” department: “Global food crisis causes unrest.”
