by

Robin Heppell

Obituary for Newspaper Obituaries

Click on the play button to listen to the sad news of the passing of the Newspaper Obituary

Funeral Futurist, Robin Heppell reports the sad news of the passing of the Newspaper Obituary…

Newspaper Obituary: 1831 – 2010

In the early years the Newspaper Obituary served its community well, disseminating the biographical and funeral service information about its community residents who died.  Over the years, Newspaper Obituary became more profitable, sometimes 3 to 5 times more profitable than its cousins, Garage Sales and Used Cars.  Eventually it was promoted to the front page of the classifieds and ended up with the honor of its own line item in the Index on the front page of the newspaper.

Many citizens started their day with Newspaper Obituary, fondly referring to it as Obits.

In the last 20 years, Newspaper Obituary became greedy, holding grieving families at ransom. This was the beginning of the end for Newspaper Obituary.  It lost the respect of its customers even though they were forced to still use Newspaper Obituary’s services.

Newspaper Obituary’s long-time friend, the Funeral Director, its number one referrer of business, became disenchanted with Newspaper Obituary as the Funeral Director was often the barer of the bad news to the grieving families of Newspaper Obituary’s ever increasing rates.

Ironically, it was the this one-time friend, the Funeral Director who dealt Newspaper Obituary its fatal blow as the Funeral Director has a new friend – its name is Google, and together they can disseminate the same information faster and at virtually no cost to the family.

Good riddance Newspaper Obituary.  No service by request. Donations may be made to your local newspaper’s survival fund.

Please share your thoughts below.  Also, feel free to add this link to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Digg, etc, by clicking on the little icons below.  Thanks.

…Hepp

In:

, ,

Tags:

, , ,

10 responses to “Obituary for Newspaper Obituaries”

  1. BT Hathaway

    Granted, obituaries no longer serve the public interest in the way they once did, but we poor funeral directors still need a method to disseminate information about deaths and funerals to a large number of non-computer literate people who couldn’t initiate a Google search if their life depended upon it. Without a newspaper, those people do not show up at all and funerals fail to serve the whole community.

    If we choose to bury the newspaper, we still need to figure out how to communicate with that crowd of people who will never once find an obit on the internet.

    BT

  2. Robin Heppell

    BT…

    Thanks for your thoughts. I don’t think that the newspaper obituary notices will disappear entirely, but as they continue to lose money I’m sure they won’t feel obligated to offer them as a public service – they’ll have to make a business decision.

    Luckily now, we have another option (or options). Funeral home website obits can be found by Google – in some cases in under 30 minutes. Other options are services like http://www.Tributes.com that can have the notice uploaded and then directing the reader back to the funeral home’s website.

    Also too – don’t count out the resourcefulness of us humans. If the presses stopped running tomorrow, collectively in our communities we would figure out a way to get the information out.

    My overall intent of the above exercise was to demonstrate that they haven’t ceased entirely, but that they no longer have the monopoly on distributing funeral service information, and therefore cannot hold that over the families we serve.

    I always appreciate your input BT – thanks again!

    …Hepp

  3. Daniel Jansen

    The obit on obits is good ! Most papers ( lets face it most businesses ) can’t let something that is good and works, well keep going without screwing it up.
    The same goes with our industry – every year, many of us get the computer out and raise our prices insanely. Dont you think families have become frustrated over the never ending rise in funeral care costs too. Do you think most funeral homes take a hard look at there operating expenses and try to reduce them ? Maybe you dont need that XM radio in the preproom, maybe 1 cadillac is better than 3. So as we raise our glasses and toast to the papers demise – might we take a hard look at the growing trend within our own industry.

  4. rca

    I agree that newspapers have overpriced their obituaries in comparison with other ads. But as previously stated for the many folks out there who do not use their computer for news, how else do you get the word out. We have suggested to families to run an abbreviated obit in the newspaper and then a full length write up on our website. A few have done that but most are not ready to consider it. It is sad when a family spends more on obits in several out of town papers than on the service, but it has happend more than a few times with us. As for funeral service prices continuing to rise, it is like everything else in life, we all say how high will this go and when will it stop. Well, guess what. It has stopped for a lot of things and its most likely that trend will continue to filter through into other life expenses, funerals being one of them. We are already seeing that in the many limited service providers that have opened in recent years. They may not all succeed but enough will figure it out and as the business becomes more fragmented we will all be faced with those hard decisions.

  5. gerrit

    The obit brief sounds like it could become something. Obits use to be free in some newspapers, but so was some of the services the funeral home offered. We would be surprised at how many senior citizens know how to Google.

    One thing some of people do not like and that is change, the funeral industry is one of the slowest to change, it seems it needs proof after proof before a change takes place.

  6. stan stobierski

    Hep, Good article about newspaper obituaries I think it is about time we stop supporting our enemy. USUALLY when we (funeral service) does an oustanding task nothing is printed but once something is wrong even if it is not funeral service makes headlines. Online obituaries are the way of the future and I hope it is sooner than later. Thanks again for all your ideas and help. STAN S.

  7. john paul

    Hep, Great article about obits!! Why do we stand for newspapers taking advantage of us and our families. We as funeral directors:
    1. Gather information from families for obituaries
    2. Write the obituaries
    3. e-mail the obituaries to the local newspapers
    4. All they have to do is cut and paste obit we wrote
    5. Then we become bill collectors for the newspaper
    6. If we dont collect and pay on time, the newspaper charges us interest.

    Maybe local newspapers should:
    1. Pay a columnist to take the time and gather information from the families
    2. Write the obits, and proofread the obits with families
    3. Submit the obit themselves
    4. Retain billing information
    5. Bill their customers
    6. Charge their customers interest if they dont pay

    I think this process is backwards, especially in a time and age with the internet and fast moving information, that we(funeral service providers) and grieving families have to put up with it.

  8. Dan Easton

    I stubled on this blog and just wanted to give you an opposing viewpoint. Given that I work for a medium-sized, independently owned newspaper, I take exception to some of the comments here. Just a few thoughts:

    @ john stobierski: Why is the newspaper the “enemy”? I would sincerely like to understand this perspective I am hearing while many newspapers are on the verge of collapse. I acknowledge that In some instances, newspapers have brought this upon themselves through a failure to adapt, but the same could be said for the funeral service industry.

    @ daniel janesen: Interesting perspective. I can tell you that in the four years that I have been in the newspaper business, we have been aggressively reducing expenses. I think your advice for the funeral service industry is good. We all need to adapt to a rapidly changing landscape.

    @john paul: You omitted a couple of important items. 7) Newspaper spends copious amounts on ink and paper to print the obit 8) Newspaper pays for the time and fuel for the carriers to deliver that obit to people’s doorsteps every day. 9) Newspaper pays for web technology to publish the obit and related information to the web.

    Also note that our local funeral homes actually prefer our new system where they log in and submit the obit electronically themselves. The complaints we used to get were related to having us write the obit (back when we did them for free) because we would inevitably get some detail wrong, which is clearly a terrible thing in a time of grief for the customer.

    While many are crying foul about how newspapers are stealing them blind to line their pockets with money, literally dozens of newspapers have either gone bankrupt are will in the coming months. I don’t understand the glass raising and tap dancing.

    I for one am extremely concerned about a world without newspapers. Not necessarily the “ink on paper” thing, but the fundamental mission of newspapers and journalists. I’ve only been in this business for 4 years, but I have become a believer that journalism is a cornerstone of democracy. Obits and other classifieds were part of the staple that funded newsrooms and allowed them to engage in serious investigative journalism. Now we are having to reinvent ourselves as an industry and prove our worth over the value of anonymous and unverified bloggers in cyberspace.

    I’m honestly not trying to start a war of words here, so forgive me if I’m coming off half cocked, but I really would like to understand what it is that newspapers could do to rebuild these relationships with funeral homes and still preserve an economic model that helps newspapers to continue their mission. Maybe that’s worth a discussion between Hepps ‘blog and some of the newspaper and classified blogs I frequent?

  9. Chris Cobler

    I work with Dan at the Victoria Advocate, and I would add that we continue to print the first several inches of an obituary for free. We want to remain the place the community turns to in times of grief and celebration.

    As an editor, I long opposed charging anything for obituaries, but I’m comfortable with the compromise of providing a limited amount for free and then charging a modest amount to allow customers to present the obituary exactly as they want. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the previous model in which newsrooms treated these as news items and restricted what survivors could print.

    I agree with Dan that newspapers and funeral homes should be partners in helping our mutual customers.

  10. Mike

    My family paid over $500 to list my grandma’s death notice. It is shamefull and ridiculous how insensitive the Sacramento Bee has become, we did indeed feel like we were being held for ransom because we love and honor her memory and felt obligated to list an obituary. They, other newspapers like them, are taking advantage of grieving families and are not the least ashamed for doing so. In a city filled with politicians, not one of them seems to care enough to try and help put a stop to overcharging for obits, yet they provide protection from price gouging in other areas of our society. It is disgusting.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *