By: Mark Fitzgerald Life magazine is coming back as a weekend newspaper supplement, but it won't be bumping up against Parade or USA Weekend in the Sunday paper.
Insiders say parent Time Inc. will announce within two weeks or so that Life will be revived as a newspaper supplement published every Friday. Time is lining up newspaper companies to run the supplement and readying a formal announcement.
Besides its early weekend publication date, it remains unclear exactly how the newspaper version of Life will distinguish itself from the mix of celebrities, health news and inspirational features offered on Sundays by Parade and Gannett Co.'s USA Weekend. "The [reader] demographic and the type of editorial in Life ... will become more evident as you see the newspapers and [newspaper] companies that carry it," one person familiar with the project said.
The plan to bring back Life, which folded as a standalone magazine in 2000, have been bruited about for some time (see E&P Nov. 10, 2003). New attention was focused on the effort on Tuesday, however, when Time Inc. Editor in Chief Norman Pearlstine announced that Bill Shapiro, the managing editor of Time Inc. Custom Publishing since 2001, would be joining the "Life development team." Shapiro headed a previous new product development team that created the concept and prototype of All You, a monthly women's magazine Time Inc. is launching in September.
The Life project is led by Time magazine General Manager Andy Blau and includes Peter Bauer, who recently joined from People, where he was president.
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