The first report of Robin Williams’s death was at 6:54 p.m. Eastern time. Twenty-four minutes later, The Times posted its first article. A Times news team — including more than a dozen reporters, the Obituary, National and Metro desks and video producers — was quickly in gear reporting the obituary and related stories that ran in today’s paper. The night note from Tom Jolly, the assistant managing editor, to staff editors provides an inside look at how the unexpected obituary came together.
Good morning,
The first report of Robin Williams’ death broke at 6:54. Dave Itzkoff got confirmation from Williams’ publicist and Emma Fitzsimmons wrote a quick news report that we alerted at 7:18.
Great teamwork continued from there. Itzkoff wrote the obit with Bill McDonald, Peter Keepnews and Dan Gold editing and Brian Fidelman carving out a full-page for the jump and an appraisal that Tony Scott was writing
for first City. The Metro and National copy desks also lent hands to slot the obit as it grew for second edition.
Lillie Dremeaux, Karen Zraick and Susanna Timmons built out the report with text and video links and other accompanying material and Ian Fisher and Jaimie Abir weighed in with great
suggestions.
Jeremy Egner curated video and other Times content for a complementary ArtsBeat post.
Jeremy Zilar was reaching out to Dan Wakin on Soo-Jeong Kang to see if actors around NYC would be willing to share their thoughts on video on Tuesday.
Nicole Perlroth drove out to the two possible addresses we could find in Marin County, but neither was correct. She volunteered to cover the sheriff department’s news conference on Tuesday, at 2 p.m. NY time and we took her up on it.
The obit by Dave Itzkoff topped out at about 35,000 readers a little after 9 and interest remained strong thereafter.
Jeremy Egner’s ArtsBeat item, “Remembering Robin Williams,” was running second in readership on the site.
Tony Scott’s appraisal came in for first City and we planned to put it in the photo display spot to start the day. He also recorded a video that was going up overnight.
Beyond Robin Williams, other articles getting attention were Mark Landler’s piece on Hillary Clinton’s differences with Obama on foreign policy, Peter Baker’s piece on Maliki frustrating Bush and Obama.
Ferguson, Mo., remained tense after another confrontation between protesters and police. The ever-industrious Emma Fitzsimmons was gathering tweets and other elements from social media to complement the Julie Bosman-Erica Goode news report.
The Maliki day story was the lead on most news sites, with the Robin Williams’ death also prominent on most of them. The LATimes was an unsurprising exception, leading with Williams.