• by Ray Schultz , Yesterday

Adam Bernstein, the obituaries editor of The Washington Post is jumping to The New York Times to serve as a deputy editor on the obituary desk. 

“Adam is as well-suited for the role as anyone I can imagine,” says Bill McDonald, the obituaries editor of the Times. “Passionate about obits since he was a young newspaper intern, he made The Post’s obituary section one of the best in the business, routinely giving our own operation a run for its money. In our regular survey of what the competition was up to every morning, The Post was always the one we’d check first.” 

Among Bernstein's favorite obituaries were those on Edward von Kloberg III, the lobbyist for dictators and despots who embraced the slogan “Shame is for sissies”; and the filmmaker Billy Wilder, who wooed his future wife with the line, “I’d worship the ground you walked on, if only you lived in a better neighborhood,” McDonald continues. 

Obituary writing is a stressful profession. As Gay Talese reported in his classic profile of the old-time Times obit writer Alden Whitman, Whitman had suffered a heart attack and he and his wife couldn’t figure out which obit had caused it—T.S. Eliot or Winston Churchill.