Thursday, July 30, 2009

Farewell Footage

In the past two years, producers at The New York Times on the Web have stockpiled more than two dozen video obits of famous subjects. Ten more are currently "in production."

"There is editing and production and interviewing, and it takes time. You have to do a lot of research, get archival footage, acquire rights to things and go through our own video library," David Rummel, the Times senior producer for news and documentary, told Editor & Publisher magazine.

At the time of this writing, The Times has published four Vobits: Art Buchwald, Dith Pran, Odetta and Stewart Mott. In each case, the Website agreed to keep the involvement and identity of the subject confidential until the time of death.

Is your news organization doing this? If not, why not?

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