Obit isn’t dead, though it could use more readers.
Founded two years ago by architects J. Robert Hillier and his wife, Barbara, the web magazine that notes the passing of the great and not so great is a success with critics for its design and writing.
Site visits are picking up, but still lagging behind expectations, J. Robert Hillier told The New York Times.
“The topic of death is still a hurdle for a lot of readers,” Hillier said.
But Hillier, 72, reports that his other ventures are doing fine, despite the gloomy economy, and that his transition from architectural firm leader to media executive has gone well.
In January, the Hilliers purchased Princeton Magazine and moved its headquarters to Princeton, N.J. Advertising is up 40 percent.
The Hilliers are also the majority owners of Town Topics, a free weekly in Princeton.
The newspaper is making money in a time when other print publications are suffering.
And Hillier, a Princeton native and Princeton University graduate, continues to teach at that university’s architectural school.
Hillier has the cash to start projects because of an architectural career that took hold in 1966 when he founded Hillier Architecture, which came to have a worldwide reputation.
The firm had 300 designers when it merged in 2007 with RMJM Group of Scotland for $30 million.
With the merger, J. Robert Hillier became a deputy CEO of RMJM Group. Barbara Hillier stayed on as a designer.
The U.S. wing of the new venture was called RMJM Hillier until 2008, when “Hillier” was dropped from the name.
In July of this year, Hillier left RMJM and started a real estate design and development firm called J. Robert Hillier.
“I decided to brand myself,” he told Brent Bowers of the Times.
Hillier had high hopes for Obit when the website debuted on line on April 1, 2007, thinking he had spotted an underserved niche market.
“It’s not about obits, it’s about life,” Hillier told Bowers a couple of months after the site was up and running.
Still, a person, or a church or an automobile line has to have expired before Obit takes a look at the life.
The site has its own writers, but it also links to obituaries published in newspapers and magazines around the world.
On Friday, readers were connected to the Washington Post obituary of Ben Ali, 82, the founder of Ben’s Chili Bowl in Washington, “a place where families meet after church and where night owls come to talk, flirt and, not least, eat.”
Obit’s home page Friday featured “The Grim Reader,” by Michael Schaffer, a round up some notable passages. (Gone, but remembered, were photographer Irving Penn and Mr. Magic, the hip-hop DJ, among others.)
Obit offers several standing features, including, “Died on the Same Day.” The entry for Oct. 9 paired Che Guevera, who met his death on Oct. 9, 1967, and Oskar Schindler, who died on Oct. 9, 1974.
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