Traditionally they were also called the morgue - a humorous name, since a morgue is where dead bodies are kept in a hospital. For a newspaper, this can just be one or more filing cabinets, with the stories and pictures filed alphabetically, under the person's family name. For radio and television, it may need to be scripts in filing cabinets, and tapes on shelves or in cupboards. In this case, each tape should be clearly labelled and numbered; the number of the tape written on the script; and the tapes should be stored in sequence. When the obit is needed, the script can first be taken from the filing cabinet, and then the relevant tape can be found to go with it. There are four things to do if you want to organise a good morgue - identify the people you want to write obituaries about, gather the material, write the copy and update the obits regularly. All these things can be done on quiet news days. There is never a day when there is nothing for journalists to do. Identify subjects Think about who you would like to publish or broadcast an obituary about, when they die. Some will be obvious, especially political and traditional leaders. But you should want to cover more of society than that. Leading figures in education, commerce, agriculture, sport, the arts, the police and army, the church and any other area of life - even eminent journalists - will all be missed by their