I have made up. Well, life really is stranger than we could imagine and those people are really out there. Can't make that stuff up. No matter how good the obit is, there will be complaints if he is not. I have wondered why some persons have a lengthy writeup in their obituary and others only have a notice with minimum details.
Death notices are the boxed listings, news obits are the biographical profiles.
And there is no connection between the two operations, 'tho they appear on the same page. Half an hour remaining with today's guest, Richard Pearson, The Washington Post's chief obituary writer. I always have trouble guesstimating how truly significant a lead story in the obit section might be. I mean, if someone has the ill fortune, so to speak, of dying on a day when two or three others pass on who were more famous, that first person might be reduced to a small-font headline. This is everyone's nightmare.