BOB GARFIELD:
And I'm Bob Garfield. Actor Heath Ledger died this week at the age of 28. That bare, sad fact would have been challenging enough in the old three network days, but in today’s 24-hour – no, make that 1,440-minute news cycle – a vacuum of information simply will not do. It must be filled with factual tidbits, dots to be connected. This is how a rolled-up 20-dollar bill and a few bottles of prescription drugs suddenly translates into a squalid life of drug abuse and despondency.

Such is the geometry of modern journalism, where two points miraculously form a three-dimensional object. Of course, news organizations themselves have no wish to be guessing. On the contrary, they like to be prepared.

When Irving Berlin and Bob Hope died, the story was uncomplicated and the obituaries long since written. But what about young celebrities? The Associated Press has more than a thousand of what it calls “prepared obits,” and not all of them are dedicated to geriatric luminaries.

For instance, in the event of Britney Spears’ untimely passing, the AP is ready to go. For Heath Ledger, it surely was not. So by what calculus does a news organization nominate 20-somethings for the journalistic equivalent of a death pool?

Jesse Washington is entertainment editor of the Associated Press. Jesse, welcome to On the Media.
JESSE WASHINGTON:
Thanks for having me.

BOB GARFIELD:
At what point during the reality show that has become Britney Spears’ life did the AP say, okay, there is a chance that this show is going to end sooner rather than later – let’s get something on paper?
JESSE WASHINGTON:
It was fairly recently. I can't pinpoint the exact moment. I think that everyone would agree that she’s in trouble and does not seem to be improving, so we decided to get ready if the worst-case scenario happened.
BOB GARFIELD:
At what point did self-destructive behavior by young celebrities get the attention of the people on your obit desk? Is she the first under 30 who has had the dubious distinction of getting a prepared obit?
JESSE WASHINGTON:
She is not. But to back up a minute, the obit desk really exists all throughout the whole world at the AP and every editor, such as myself, is responsible for being prepared in their area. So we don't have some morbid group of individuals sitting around looking at folks who are ready to keel over. It’s more us exercising our news judgment.

For me, anyway, it’s a pretty simple two factors. How likely is the person to die and how big a story is it going to be when they do? And the higher up the charts those two things go, the more likely we are to take someone, assign them the obit.
BOB GARFIELD:
The late part of the 20th century gave us no shortage of celebrities whose self-destructive lifestyles led to their untimely deaths – Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, John Belushi, and so forth. At what point did the AP sort of glom onto this phenomenon and start getting prepared?
JESSE WASHINGTON:
Well, I like to think that we would never glom. I like to think in more noble terms than that. However, it’s been pretty recently because celebrity news has become so big in the past couple of years.

For example, I was at a panel yesterday speaking to some entertainment publicists, and several people there in the course of the discussion said, and when Heath Ledger died, my mom contacted me. Five years ago, if Heath Ledger died, our mom would probably read about it the next day in the newspaper. Now our moms are reading about it when they log on to check their email.

So the world has changed. People’s interest in celebrities has changed. The way people consume news has changed and the way people communicate about it has changed.

You have to be more prepared. If we wait an hour to have a really good obituary for someone like Heath Ledger, we're totally out of the game. And that’s not a place that I ever want to be.
BOB GARFIELD:
A few minutes ago I saw a video of the British singer Amy Winehouse, allegedly apparently smoking crack and otherwise under the influence of drugs and so forth, a video that is all over the Internet. It was broken by The Sun, a British tabloid. Has that incident put her on the AP’s watch list?
JESSE WASHINGTON:
Amy Winehouse has been on our radar for some time now as far as obits go. So it didn't take that video for us to have that thought.
BOB GARFIELD:
Of course, the question I want to ask you, and you certainly won't answer, is who else is on the list? Do you have internal discussions of whether someone, you know, sort of rates the premature death prepared obit list?
JESSE WASHINGTON:
The only discussion is usually from the reporter trying to get out of writing it.
BOB GARFIELD:
Jesse, it’s been a pleasure talking to you. I appreciate it.
JESSE WASHINGTON:
Thanks for having me.
BOB GARFIELD:
Jesse Washington is the entertainment editor for the Associated Press.