NY Press founder Russ "Mugger" Smith suggests in today's WSJ that someone start a magazine filled with obituaries. "An immediate concern of publishers would be that such a magazine would skew too old, missing the 18-44 demographic that advertisers desire," Smith says. "But as People has demonstrated with its combination of Hollywood, human interest stories, personal essays and coverage of baking contests and spelling bees, Obituary could appeal to anyone who can read." To which I responded, "HA HA HA HA HOh, wait. He's being serious."
UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis writes: "I was at People magazine when they discovered the value of death. Once was, they would never put a dead person on the cover. But then John Lennon died and the issue sold through the roof of heaven. Pretty soon, there were so many corpses on the cover of peoplewith the likes of Karen Carpenter and Rock Hudson finding their comebacks only when they couldn't come backthat I said we should change the logo and start calling it Dead People."
Grim reader: let's have obituary magazine [WSJ]