‘The Last Word’

Posted on January 21, 2007 by Melissa Worden

Many are touting “The Last Word” as innovative and break-through journalism.

But Art Buchwald’s video obituary posted on nytimes.com this week has haunted me since seeing him introduce himself by saying, “Hi, I’m Art Buchwald, and I just died.”

That creeps me out.

And I don’t see how this project is so ground-breaking.

Don’t get me wrong, I admire the sentiment of a video tribute, and it’s helpful to be able to see and hear the person who just died rather than reading about it. Filming video for solely that purpose hasn’t been done before as far as I know.

But in addition to the ick factor, I’m not too impressed with the actual video: It’s too long and even though it’s broken up into pieces, the style isn’t condusive to Web surfing. That same video could easily be a news segment on a news show like CBS Morning News. And TV is where I would go to watch something like that, not on my laptop or a new iphone-like device.

Plus, the concept behind it is old: Newspapers already have obits ready to roll on prominent figures because you certainly can’t predict death. And it makes getting copy in by deadline — or filed to the Web — a whole lot easier if the background work has already been done.

“The Last Word” is just taking that concept and turning the print into video. Where’s the innovation here?

NYT says they’ve got 10 of these videos already done for when the next celebrity they’ve interviewed has died. I just hope they don’t follow the same format.