User-Created: NY Time's The Last Word

With the death of humor columnist Art Buchwald, The New York Times has launched a new series of obituary chats titled "The Last Word," an interesting new form of oral history.

"People's lives make the best stories. At the NY Times we've had a long tradition of interviewing some of the world's most interesting people about their lives for their own orbitituaries. We're continuing that tradition in a new way now. We've asked people how they want to be remembered and recorded their thoughts. We're giving them, and you, the last world."

"Hi, I'm Art Buchwald and I just died," the late columnist says on the video, from an interview last summer.

"It took a while to get started and this is the first person we have interviewed who has died," reporter Tim Weiner told E&P. "It is the guy talking about his life in a way that television would never take the time to do, but that holds to our standards."

At least 10 other such interviews have been completed and edited, and the paper plans to conduct about three or four each month. "

via Smart Mobs and CyberJournalist