We’re alive!
After months of reaping more stories than we could run — the editing queue runneth over — we’re proud to officially unshroud GraveSite, the home for serious reporting on death and life in the meantime.
As I shared in our origin story, the journey to this point has been at once a whirlwind and a long time coming.
When my dad died at the end of 2022 — suddenly from a brain bleed — I realized how opaque death logistics are, and how shoddy our societal scaffolding is for people in mourning. So I made death my reporting beat. When my mom followed suit last December — from a fast-acting infection contracted during her second bout with cancer — I went all in, bought the GraveSite.Media domain, and cajoled a launch team of media pros to join my scheme.
Photo: Insomnia Cured Here
Our audacious goal is for GraveSite to mature into the publication of record on death in the U.S., where we’ve been spending $20B on deathcare but had no national newsroom devoted to this experience that’s at once universal and deeply inequitable.
That changes today. On our spiffy new — and rapidly evolving — homepage, you’ll find our debut publications, created by caring and accomplished mortals whose purviews span everything from journalism and playwriting to neuro- and library science, and reflective of:
Our inaugural franchises — practical guides, personal essays, intimate chats, wickedly good advice, and more
An initial slate of newsletters, which will now go out weekly in our GraveDigest
Members-only benefits, including deep-dive features and guides on navigating the thicket of death emotions and logistics, personalized recs courtesy of our advice columnist and book club convener, and full access to our growing content archive
Throughout the week, we and our collaborators will be unveiling more of what we plan to do best — rigorous journalism, transformative storytelling, and irreverent commentary on death and all its intersections with daily life — plus some behind-the-scenes goodies on how we got here.
So, are you in? We’re raffling off two pieces of merch — a cool one for subscribers, and an even cooler one for paying members — and everyone who’s part of the GraveSite community before midnight tomorrow, 9/22 (the start of the fall equinox), is eligible. Plus, anyone who buys a GraveDigger membership today can lock in our founding member rate before it goes up.
Here’s to digging deep,
Delaney Rebernik (GraveSite founder and editor-in-chief), with Alexis Haut (co-founder and executive producer) and Charli K. Elder (audience editor)