During the fall, I wrote here several times about the fall Interactive Innovation Project at Medill, whose students studied obituaries both as a form of journalism and as a source of audience and revenue. The class was sponsored by Legacy.com, the Evanston-based company that partners with hundreds of newspapers to host their online death notices, and at the end of the term Legacy received specific recommendations that went beyond the class’s white paper, “The State of the American Obituary.”
This week, on its Web site, obitresearch.com, the class released those recommendations to the industry at large: a report entitled “Transforming the Obituary Landscape.” that contains their findings (use the previous link to download a copy). Rich Gordon, with whom I led the project, published his assessment of the opportunity and challenges on Poynter.org. And as detailed in this Medill press release, Legacy announced its reaction to and decisions on implementing the recommendations (these are also detailed on obitresearch.com).
Though I am on the Legacy board, I was not involved in any way with management’s decisions on which parts of the recommendations should be implemented. On balance, switching back and forth between my board hat and professor hat, I can support the student rationales for why each recommendation was made, and the Legacy rationales for the choices it made. Rich Gordon’s post is probably the best place to go for a nuanced overall point of view, so here is yet another link so you don’t have to scroll up to go there.
Obit geek that I am, I see plenty of upside in the obituary and death notice category – for all involved. Not dead yet, indeed.
