At many journalism schools, one of the first thing students learn is how to write obituaries.

It may seem slightly odd—and grim—to start there, but the obituary really is the perfect launching spot for any aspiring writer. An obituary forces the journalist to organize and tell the story of a person’s life in an interesting, fair and not overly long way. They often distill decades of life into a few paragraphs, and since they are often the final account of a person’s life, the stakes are about as high as any story a journalist will write.

Some of the best writing done in the world each week is the obituary at the back of British news magazine The Economist. The magazine’s writers understand what an obituary means—and what it can be. It’s one of my must-reads every week.

The obituaries often are about someone important but not entirely well-known. The Economist has developed a style that finds a theme in the featured person’s life and explains to readers why that matters in their lives. Nearly every Economist obituary I’ve read features a person’s struggles, but often the conclusion is thought-provoking, if not uplifting.

To my knowledge, The Economist hasn’t written an obituary for former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, but I wish it had. The pieces that ran in media here after Paterno died Jan. 22 at age 85 did not give proper perspective on his life, complex as it was.

They just made me depressed at how quickly a person’s legacy could be ruined.

I understood the quandary in which writers found themselves. It was an unenviable task to attempt to balance the 61 years Paterno coached at—and basically built—Penn State with the sexual abuse scandal that led to the coach’s firing.

The scandal involving former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky became national news in November, and Paterno’s knowledge and subsequent handling of the scandal in 2002 cost the long-time coach his job last year. These were obviously big events in Paterno’s life, and ones that shouldn’t have been ignored in an obituary.

But a measure of balance seemed to be missing.

In one of the final interviews before his death, with Sally Jenkins of The Washington Post, Paterno said he felt remorse for not doing more when he was told about the abuse. Many people would say that remorse doesn’t excuse him from his lack of action or change the lives of the people who have been ruined by the perversity of a disturbed man.

Both of those points are true. But it remains that allegedly perverted man wasn’t Paterno, even if the accounts of his life overwhelmingly focus on the scandal. Many of the pieces I read devoted half the space to the first 84-plus years of Paterno’s life, and the rest to his final few months.

Had Paterno lived for another 10 years, Sandusky’s alleged actions probably wouldn’t have figured as prominently in Paterno’s obituary. The recent nature of the scandal made it news.

But if one mistake borne of ignorance—even one with the potential repercussions of Paterno’s—erases decades of good deeds and goodwill, then none of us deserve the benefit of the doubt.

Not that Paterno would care about any of this. Reports are coming out now, from places like Sports Illustrated, that Paterno was not a broken spirit when he died from lung cancer. He had hope his legacy at Penn State would be a positive one, and the victims of abuse at Penn State and elsewhere would find peace.

And maybe that’s the approach I should take: who cares what everyone is saying?

Still, despite having no connection to Penn State or Paterno, I find it tragic that so many have decided to focus so intently on one lapse in judgement as Joe Paterno’s legacy when there’s a whole lifetime of work—on and off the field—that proves there was more to Penn State’s longtime football coach.

Normally, it’s the job of an obituary to capture that legacy. It didn’t happen this time.