If you’ve ever wondered just how they put together the obituary page, this little Q&A with a longtime editor at the LA Times, Jon Thurber, offers an answer or two — and some insight into how and when religion finds its way onto the page:

Q: How do you apply your sense of your religion or your faith or your lack thereof to the work you do?

JON: While I don’t really adhere to any of the major religions, I’m also more interested in religion than ever before. I find myself reading more about Buddhism than anything else and I’m curious about what people believe and why they believe it.

Religion or ethics or morality comes up in some subtle ways in our work. For instance, many readers take the “speak no ill of the dead” route and criticize us if our obituaries read like anything less than a eulogy one might hear in a church. I’m continually reminding folks who call or e-mail to complain that we are not in the business of eulogizing the dead. We are in the business of writing accurate news stories on the death of someone who made news in some substantial way during their lifetime.

We focus on newsmaker obituaries at the Los Angeles Times. But we also receive anywhere from 10-15 submissions a day asking us to memorialize a loved one who had no great connection to the news. I am continually surprised at how many people equate a newspaper obituary as a validation of the worth of some person’s life. And I have to continually point out to people that the bar is rather high for a news obituary in the Times and that due to space and staffing limitations we cannot possibly handle all the requests that come in to us. I also tell them a newspaper’s decision whether or not to run an obituary should not be a deciding factor in determining the value of a person’s life or career.

But we get quite a bit of anger directed at us when we reject a submission. And I suspect this is because it far easier to be angry at the obituary editor than it is at Death or God.

Q: How has writing obituaries affected your sense of death? Of the divine? Of fate? Of chaos?

JON: I’m surprised by the seeming randomness of mortality. Otherwise healthy people go into a hospital for minor elective surgeries, develop infections and don’t come out. We ran a piece recently about a USC medical professor and internationally known specialist in urologic cancers and bladder reconstruction. A robust and active man, he spent a difficult weekend traveling to Florida for a medical convention, became ill while at the convention and was taken to a local hospital where he died of what seemed to be a massive infection. He was 45. His colleagues, patients and former patients were just devastated.

Q: It’s been in the news lately that the AP and others have started doing a lot of pre-obits for young Hollywood. How do you decide it’s time to get something on paper for somebody? Do you, Jon, have a 6th sense?

JON: I generally don’t get into the mortality guessing game for “young Hollywood.” A few years ago Robert Downey Jr. and Courtney Love were the poster children for excessive living and many had the cynical view that they wouldn’t live to old age. But they seem to have either straightened out their lives or found ways to keep their names out of the news media. I find the focus on the Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan’s a bit morbid, like waiting for a train wreck.

My colleagues and I are always working on advance obits and generally try to confine ourselves to those we know to have health issues or are closer to mortality on the actuarial tables. And while we have an advance biographical file of nearly 400 pieces, it is virtually impossible to be prepared for every newsworthy death that comes along.

There is something interesting about working on obits of older Hollywood figures, however. Seemingly thoughtful performers who have impact outside the movie industry in politics or social issues are still reluctant to talk or allow friends to talk for an advance obituary. I had trouble figuring this out the first few years I was doing this job and then it occurred to me that at any age the goal in Hollywood is still to get work. Actors of a certain age don’t get work if they are rumored to be ill. Their prospects would further plummet if word got out that someone was writing their advance obituary.

I think generations ago there was bit more acceptance and recognition of the inevitability of death. Alden Whitman, the legendary New York Times obituary writer of a half-century ago used to routinely visit newsmakers for the pre-obituary interview. Apparently, very few people of high station refused his invitation to talk about their lives. I keep wondering what kind of success he would have in this era with its marked denial of death.

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