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Columnist Buchwald Signs Off in First 'NYT' Online Obit Video
"I'm Art Buchwald and I just died," says the legendary Washington Post columnist in an online video posted on NYTimes.com yesterday. In doing so, he became the first to be featured in his own video obituary on the site, which has so far filmed at least 10 such tributes.
In an interview with Editor & Publisher, one of the paper's senior producers, David Rummel, says he spent about an hour filming reporter Tim Weiner's interview with Buchwald for the video segment, cutting the final product down to 15-20 minutes. Rummel calls the series an "oral history project," and says that other participants so far include a former president, a famous scientist, and other celebrities. A handful of others he had asked have declined to be interviewed.
Weiner, who has covered the CIA and served as a foreign correspondent for the Times, came up with the idea for the online video interviews after returning from a book leave. ... "It occurred to me that we ought to revive the tradition here of interviewing people whose deaths are likely to be Page One news for their obituaries," Weiner said. "And do it in high definition video."