Slated for mid-year launch is Obit magazine for those who like to read about the departed. Don't look for any life-or-death, down-to-earth, death-defying action articles --- or tips on stiff drinks.
The magazine is serious about death stories.
Grumpy Editor notes at a time when newspapers' business section earnings and dividend tables are being whittled, and stock market lists are being chopped or eliminated, major dailies are devoting more space to the deceased. For obituaries, the Los Angeles Times, for example, has a separate executive editor, a deputy editor and five writers. That's the size of a medium-size newspaper's business section staff.
Thus, with death pieces blooming, backers of the new magazine feel there's life to Obit and "a good obituary is a work of art." The magazine wants to be "the voice of the generation of Americans who refuse to passively slip into old age, who realize that life reinvents itself every moment." Obit boasts its obits will be "bigger and better," going the long format route.
So far, no indication the magazine will be pitching for readers on the graveyard shift.
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