Life became a shell of its former self

I mourn the passing of the Life magazine I knew in the middle decades of the last century. I contest, however, that its death was, as Tim Rutten supposed, inevitable [“Life as We Knew It,” March 28].

Notwithstanding the ubiquity of digital cameras and photo-capable cellphones, I cannot imagine that “popular tastes in media” have changed so much that a well-edited collection of dramatic and insightful photographs is no longer worth publishing.

I blame the editors of Life for killing it, and offer as evidence their “Picture of the Week.” It was as though the publication was mocking its own extraordinary legacy, selecting one largely unexceptional photo and giving it but one-third of a page. The rest of the magazine had devolved to the status of a People, Us or Parade, a puff piece for this or that celebrity du jour, in a pathetic, and ultimately vain, attempt to appeal to a critical mass of readers.

Life’s golden age has long passed, and I can say only “good riddance” to the sad rag it became.

MIKE DIEHL

Glendale

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HOW sad to see what Life magazine has become, a shell of its former self. I remember every week a new edition dropped on the front step with all the mail, waiting to be opened and read. All the colorful pictorials and famous people on the cover of a very thick and beautiful magazine. You couldn’t wait to hold on to that lush, book-like magazine as it would take you on a visual journey to the very last page.

All the familiar things we grew up with are practically gone now; this is one that should have remained intact.

FRANCES TERRELL LIPPMAN

Los Angeles