5. The New York Times “Morgue”

One of the most fascinating aspects revealed in the upcoming documentary OBIT: Life on the Dead Beat of The New York Times is the “morgue” of The New York Times, a filing facility of past and advance obituaries, the latter which are kept under lock and key. Located in dusty basement of the Herald Tribune building, it also serves as a resource for the entire paper. Every item is alphabetized, with photographs of the notable, some which haven’t been seen in the public for 80 to 90 years. As Gould tells Untapped,

The morgue [is] really fit for an entire documentary itself.  An enormous analog 100-year archive–wholly unique–fighting for itself own existence in a digital world deep in the basement of high-rent Manhattan real estate, is a worthy plot.  It’s tended in the best of hands by highly capable archivist Jeff Roth, who does the work of–what formerly–dozens of people did.  There are things in the The New York Times morgue that most likely, at this point, do not exist anywhere else in the world.  Naturally, the New York Times obit staff rely on the morgue and Jeff Roth as part of their research in writing journalism’s best obituaries.

Read more about the documentary here.