Sam Roberts discusses ARE THEY DEAD YET?: The Art of the Obit. After nearly a decade behind the obituaries desk at the paper of record, Roberts knows obits aren't really about deaths. In fact, they usually only mention dying once. Over the course of the nearly 1,500 obituaries he has written throughout his career, he has instead come to understand that they're about distilling an entire life lived—for someone whose name he may have learned that morning.