After he forked over more than $400 to run an obituary on his mother, the executive editor of the
Columbia Journalism Review writes that he would like to meet the newspaper manager who first
thought up the practice of paid obits. Mike Hoyt "would like to say to him, What a genius you are, sir! An income stream stretching into infinity!" Or perhaps not, he adds on further reflection,
given the current state of the newspaper business. "I would say, Your idea, sir, may mark the precise moment on the timeline when newspapers began a slow drift away from their readers."
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