For reasons not worth getting into, I was reading the NYT obituary of Ronald Reagan this morning. It was published on June 6, 2004. It quotes Kenneth Lynn, a history professor at Johns Hopkins, calling RR “one of the most important presidents of the 20th century.” There’s more, and it’s nice, pro-RR stuff. What the NYT doesn’t say is that Lynn died three years earlier, in 2001. There’s nothing wrong with drafting an obit in advance, so that a quality piece is ready to run at a moment’s notice. But they do require updating.