Newspaper Death Notices May Be a Dying Business

Hugh Pickens writes "Alan D. Mutter writes in his journalism blog 'Reflections of a Newsosaur' that some newspapers exploit bereaved families with exorbitantly priced death notices — a distasteful and strategically inept way for them to try to make ends meet. 'I stumbled across the problem this week when I tried to buy a death notice in ... the San Francisco Chronicle, which proposed charging $450 for the one-day run of a crappy-looking, 182-word death notice,' writes Mutter. But lose the death notice business, and newspapers risk losing a huge audience driver as well. The solution may be partnering with websites like Legacy.com, a site that already publishes death notices for about two-thirds of the people who die each day in the US. 'It may not be easy to figure out the terms of a broader collaboration, writes Rich Gordon on Poynter.org, 'partly because some newspaper executives are wary of Legacy and feel the company could become a competitive threat for audiences and revenue. But this is exactly the reaction many newspaper executives had to collaborating with Internet companies in other classified advertising categories. I'd hate to see newspapers make the same mistake with death notices and obituaries.'"

Comments

They'll be pricing themselves out of the market

[Anonymous Coward]

"...which proposed charging $450 for the one-day run of a crappy-looking, 182-word death notice"

I'm sure a web site would be more than happy to take over their business for, let's say, $45 a day for listing 1820 words, and the web site will still make money at it.

Does Not Surprise me.

[puto]

There is nothing cheap in San Fran other than Chinese food.

Re:Huge audience driver?

[Saint Stephen]

Yeah, when you get Gray hair, it becomes a popular pastime. Believe it or not, people used to live in things called Communities, and sometimes, they'd recognize a name in the paper, because they Knew People.

I know, I can't believe it either. How wierd.

Why publish a death notice?

[Matt Perry]

Why in the world would someone publish a death notice in the first place? Is it some sort of legal requirement? If not, I don't understand the thought processes that would lead someone to want to do such a thing.

Re:Why publish a death notice?

[ColdWetDog]

Why in the world would someone publish a death notice in the first place? Is it some sort of legal requirement? If not, I don't understand the thought processes that would lead someone to want to do such a thing.

It may be required for estate or other legal purposes. And, as another poster noted, it's traditional and some people expect it. Didn't realize they were so expensive, but dammnit, dying ain't cheap these days. Nothing is.

Re:Why publish a death notice?

[goodmanj]

Let me set the stage for you. You're an old man. Once, you lived in a "neighborhood", which is a place where you know and hang out with people who live and work next door. But as you got older, you moved away, into a retirement or nursing home.

Then you died. You know thousands of people face-to-face by name, who'd like to know that you're no longer around. How does your family let them know? For this generation, the answer is *not* "Facebook".

I swear, the concept of face-to-face friendship is so foreign to young people today, our society is starting to look like Asimov's "The Naked Sun".

But anyway, any business whose primary profit center comes from people who'll be dead in a few years is in trouble.

Re:Why publish a death notice?

[Hizonner]

Your family individually, personally contacts the people they know were close to you. Those people fill in the gaps. No, it's not fun. But it's necessary. I've done it. I'll probably be doing it again in a few years.

If actually know somebody well enough to really care if they've died, it's pretty cold to have to read about it in the newspaper. And it's pretty lazy to use the newspaper as an escape hatch.

The good news is that you can do a lot of it by e-mail. An awful lot of older people use e-mail these days, maybe because they're old and wise enough to realize that correspondence and face to face contact aren't, in fact, mutually exclusive. Maybe they even remember when it was actually hard to travel to see somebody, and you sent, you know, letters...

Anyway, which paper should I publish the notice in, given that all those friends have probably also moved?

Re:Why publish a death notice?

[ducomputergeek]

But with everything that happens when someone passes away, it's damn hard to remember everybody and even harder to get ahold of everyone. Especially when you're having to get burial plots, caskets, and all the other stuff that goes on. Especially if the person was highly connected and you had been away for quite some time. I saw it with my mother. She was one of those people who knew a lot of people. I certainly didn't know them all.

and to take it a step further...

[IANAAC]

In a city like SF, I can sort of understand why it doesn't really make sense anymore to publish obits.

SF is largely transient. It isn't made up of longstanding communities anymore. Neighborhoods, yes. Communities, not so much. It's largely a young person's town, and most of the young people who live in SF aren't from there. No different than NYC (or any other large, attractive city), I guess.

I think the only places where tightly knit communities would still want that sort of service are mostly small towns, where families and friends still actually commune together. Most suburbs aren't that sort of community either - they're places people go to sleep after working too many hours in another suburb or city.

Re:and to take it a step further...

[dwye]

Most suburbs aren't that sort of community either - they're places people go to sleep after working too many hours in another suburb or city.

Except that suburbanites put their obits in the main city paper (or papers - still a few cities with two majors, for various reasons), not in the local upgraded PennySaver. And yes, I write from experience.

As far as obits and young/transient cities go, I doubt that the survivors of the transients put obits in the (frex) SF paper, but instead put them in their home town papers, if anywhere.

I think the only places where tightly knit communities would still want that sort of service are mostly small towns

Or places that used to attract people, like Detroit or Pittsburgh, where there is still a core of non-movers who act as contact points for those who left.

Re:Huge audience driver?

[dAzED1]

I still live in a community - have parties with my neighbors on a regular basis, even. But that doesn't mean I'm going to morbidly look in obituaries every day to see if one of them died - because, you know, I'm actually still *in touch* with my friends, so if one died I'd know about it...I wouldn't need to read about it in the paper.

Families Have Driven This Transition

[Anonymous Coward]

The "market share" for obits and death notices has been shifting to the web for years. This was initially driven by families who disliked the strict formats of newspaper obituaries and wanted to add personal touches to obits. Newspaper have tightly standardized formats for obits, largely to impose discipline on the process of compiling them, which is typically done by staffers who are new or low in the reportorial heirarchy. Online remembrance sites offered the opportunity for family members to create more personal obits, and perhaps more importantly, allowed those who knew the deceased to add their comments and memories. As these sites grew in popularity, newspapers started loosening their obit and death notice formats.

Newspapers missed a huge opportunity by not hooking up with someone like Aldor Solutions, which started out making software for funeral directors and later branched out into online remembrance sites and web sites for funeral homes. It turns out the funeral director is the key player in the "death care" business food chain, and Aldor set out to be the technology provider to the funeral directors. I learned about them when I was writing about a dedicated hosting company called Layered Technologies. It turns out some of the principals of Aldor formed LT as the hosting arm of their operations.

A personal experience: I worked for newspapers for 20 years, but was startled by the cost of death notices. Most families have no idea how much these cost because it's often handled by the funeral director and bundled with the larger funeral bill. I handled this personally when a family member passed away, and was just floored at the cost ... about $300 for two newspapers. Death notices remain essential as a way to notify acquaintances who aren't web-savvy of someone's death and the funeral arrangements. But this was another area where newspapers have missed the Internet opportunity.

Re:It doesn't matter

[Arancaytar]

Well, newspapers are dead - Netcraft just confirmed it.

Re:Huge audience driver?

[BitZtream]

There was a time when newspapers ran birth and death announcements for free ... as a community service.

Now they charge?

Its no wonder they are going under, its always good to kick people when their down.

Re:Publish it on Slashdot like I did

[rts008]

You sir, have my vote as the coolest brother ever!

I don't know how I missed the original /. article, but I just checked both links...OUTSTANDING!

Please accept my belated condolences, as I'm sure you loved him very much to something this neat for him. :-)
I know from experience that you probably encountered resistance from some of the family to pull this off. Glad you stuck to you guns.

I caused an inter-family feud when I scattered my grandfather's ashes at his favorite fishing hole. That was his last request, I promised him it would be done, and it was.
The fallout lasted decades, but I would do it again if required. :-(

Beam me up Scotty. I'm done here.

Nicely done, a truly fitting epitaph for a Geek.

Printed media is dying

[Illogical Spock]

The newspapers are dying in it's today's form, not just the death notice market. I know that it will not happen tomorrow nor in the next 5 years, but it will eventually, as more and more people reads the news on the Internet. And the question here is not just the price (zero x something), but timing. In the past, you would need to wait until the next day to read about some big news in depth, as TV news tend to be just a highlight of the situation. But now? 5 minutes after anything happens you can track the news almost in real time, and not only in your local news sources, but around the world.

The fact is that the Internet is changing every single thing we do, but impacted more extensively in printed materials. The news, the media, the classified ads, the yellow pages, the way we search for restaurants, etc. This is a good thing for sure, but in the process entire businesses will die, people will be unemployed and entire professions will be obsolete, like it happened in the past with cobblers, typewriter repairmen, etc. And then new professions will flourish, and the ones that adapt will be back in the marketing. More of the same, but this time in a much bigger scale.