Kinds of story
Obituary
Also: obit
An account of a person's life published soon after their death, recording who they were and what they did.
An obituary is a small biography written against the clock. It is not a death notice or a eulogy: it is a fair, factual account of a life, the failings alongside the achievements. Big papers keep obituaries of the famous ready in advance. The craft is to capture a whole person in a few hundred words, and to get every fact right when the subject can no longer correct you.