The heartless selling of obituaries...

Will the newspaper get a discount when it publishes its own obit after the last reader dies?

 

I worked with a woman who was our "obit" person before the paper began automating and charging for obits.
She was great - she would contact the families if something in the obit didn't make sense or to check on a typo - and she would tip-off the news people if someone who might have been a big wheel in town before anyone on the staff was there had passed away.

 

Devoted sister, beloved ¢unt.

 

Every reporter, even if it's just for a week, ought to go over on the other end of the building and write obits for the reason others have mentioned: You get some fascinating stories.

 

We started charging for obits a while after going corporate. It's a $35 flat fee. The justification was "every other paper does it."

My aunt died a year ago this week. When her family got the funeral arrangements made, they submitted the obit to four papers: Garden City (where she lived most of her life), Hutchinson and Wichita (they serve Garden City) and here.

The only one that charged my relatives? Us. I was surprised Wichita didn't. So they weren't actually going to run it here except that someone at the paper noticed her name and realized she was my aunt, so they got it in for free.

My aunt's family was pissed and I couldn't offer any sort of defense.

 

I guess I'm confused about the difference between an obit and a death notice. Where I grew up, the paper runs paid death notices (has for years and years) and (free) obits, written by the staff. The paper chooses who to write the obits on. When my dad died, we placed a paid death notice in the paper (through the funeral home) and because my dad was prominent in the community, they also ran an obit on him. They got extra info for the obit from my mom and from the paper's archives.

 

Per my employee handbook, when I die, my shop will run my obit for free. Thanks, guys.

 

May be one of the scariest things about dying ... knowing some pimple-faced kid right out of school may be doing a news obit on me.

 

In our paper, a death notice is name, age, town, funeral home and date/time of service. An obit is whatever the family submits.

We've done "staff obits" that are more of a story about the person, their influence and their death. Those are considered news stories and not available for sale.

 

If I was a newspaper - I'd sell obits in advance. Lock in today's rate and spare your family the trouble, kind of like funeral homes do.

 

And the cemeteries.

 

Ding ding ding.

I was ME at a 5-day daily 20 years ago when the order came down from corporate to start charging $25 for obits. This was when charging for obits was a new thing.

The funeral homes went APE SHIT. Threatened to organize boycotts, raised their funeral package price and blamed it all on us, the funeral directors went on local radio and sounded off about it, etc etc.

Quickly we did a little investigative journalism, and found out the funeral homes had ALREADY been charging $200-$300 for "obituary and publicity service" in their basic package rate, and had been doing so for years and years. At a time when almost NO newspapers charged for obits.

I haven't paid for an obit for about a decade, but I think that charge is a lot more now. (Or else, the actual cost of paid obits is added on top of the "publicity service.")