State of the American Obituary

The graduate students at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism have been working all semester long researching obituaries, including doing extensive interviews. They have now issued a report, the State of the American Obituary (it's a PDF and in case it doesn't download, here's a link to their blog).

It's really interesting reading, especially the conclusions and recommendations at the end of the 30-page report. The trend toward democratization of obit subjects, the use of social media to distribute news and create/connect a community, and the challenges that digital media pose to the print media in this subject are all right on, based on our observations here. Of course, implementation is the hard part but this report provides a good overview and analysis of where things stand.

What are your thoughts?