Born in 1936, Life has already died twice: as a weekly in 1972, and as a monthly in May 2000. But although a picture-driven magazine would seem like an anachronism in the Internet age, Time Inc appears to believe that Life's heart is still beating.
This week, two new issues hit newsstands simultaneously: America's Parade, a long-planned history of Macy's Thanksgiving Day ritual, and In the Land of the Free, a rapidly executed retrospective of the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath.
They represent Life's latest incarnation: as an ad-free, single-topic "premium magazine" -- 128 pages; perfect-bound; heavy, 100-pound stock; a US$9.95 cover price -- that will be published every six weeks.
Life did not survive as a monthly, said the editor, Robert Sullivan, because "its topic is the whole world, and that's a tough sell in a niche-magazine age."
Also, its baby-boomer readers "weren't of interest to advertisers," Sullivan said.
Yet in 2000, the book Our Century in Pictures sold 675,000 copies despite a US$60 cover price, which "keyed us in to the strength of the brand," said Life's general manager, Andrew Blau.
So the company tested the magazine with narrowly focused "bookazines" on topics like World War II and Pearl Harbor, which performed well. The question, Blau acknowledged, "is, can you do this beyond World War II?"
Sullivan thinks so, and pointed to several exclusives in the issue about the terrorist attacks, like photos inside the stairwell as people were escaping the World Trade Center, and Joe McNally's Polaroid portraits of survivors and rescue workers. He said that future issues, drawing in part on Time Inc's archive of 10 million photographs, will cover the space program, rock 'n' roll and Queen Elizabeth's coronation.
Issues that seem especially keepsake-worthy are being expanded into hardcover books. In the Land of the Free is being published next month by Little, Brown as One Nation, with a different cover (a photomosaic by Robert Silvers of an American flag composed of portraits of the tragedy's victims) and 64 additional pages of both photography (like a 10-page portfolio by the war photographer James Nachtwey) and essays (by David McCullough, James Bradley, Thomas Keneally and Melissa Fay Greene).
In an odd twist, Life's book turns out to be more up-to-date than its magazine: the anthrax outbreaks occurred after the newsstand version was shipped but before the book was completed. So Sullivan changed the section that in the magazine is titled "Back to Life" to "The New Normal."
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