Newspaper Death Notices May Be a Dying Business 171
Posted
by
kdawson
from the it's-dead-jim dept.
from the it's-dead-jim dept.
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.'"
Next to go, legal notices (Score:3, Interesting)
Many print newspapers carry "legal notices", of D/B/A names, incorporations, and such. As non-searchable information, that's almost useless. But it's a big profit center for many newspapers, which are fighting to keep it. [74.125.155.132](Google cache of Michigan Press Association, whose web site is down)
On the other hand, if governments don't require that information to be published, they should maintain the database (which they will have anyway for internal purposes) and offer free access. D/B/A names in the United States are handled at the county level, and that data can be hard to obtain on line. There are commercial services that collect it, expensively. Considering that the amount of data is small by modern standards (all the data for the US will fit on a DVD), it's not a high-cost item.
Re:Huge audience driver? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm in my 30's and get the paper around here for just that. Because you do lose touch with friends. In the last 2 years I've had 3 friends die from cancer and one commit suicide. All good friends that I went to school with, it's not just the grey hair folks but those of us who have strong community ties. If I walked downtown, nearly every shopkeeper would greet me by name.
As well, the costs of these things are...insane. My grandfather who was rather well known in the community died 2 years ago. To run his obituary in 3 of the local/nearby community papers ran around $800.
What about social network sites (Score:2, Interesting)
I thought social network sites are/will be a good solution for this. You don't even have to know the password of the dead one to query his/her friends. (But I guess you could get even the password if you prove the site owners that you're the closest relative of the dead one.)
They're not alone either (Score:5, Interesting)
Publish it on Slashdot like I did (Score:5, Interesting)
Obituaries (Side Story) (Score:3, Interesting)
I was at a rummage sale looking around, when I spotted a rather spiffy blue briefcase. After purchasing it, I took it home and was loading it with a few things when I noticed a small square of paper. It was the obituary for the person who had owned it before. Talk about creepy.
Re:Huge audience driver? (Score:3, Interesting)
Most newspapers still run free obituaries as well as paid death notices. But the free versions are generally limited in the types of information contain, and as newspapers have cut back on their size they've also reduced the amount of detail the obits contain. At the newspaper where I work, it's pretty much name, age, where the person lived and when and where the funeral is. (Some of the really big papers have eliminated the free ones altogether).
The paid death notices, on the other hand, function more like classifieds: You can write it any way you want, and you pay by the line or the word.
What most people don't realize, though, is that the funeral homes charge a hefty free even for providing the newspaper with the barebones information for a free obit. And some funeral homes do an appalling job. One major home in my city seems to pick the employee with the most God-awful penmanship to scrawl the information by hand; names are hard to read and details like place names are often misspelled. One of my first newsroom jobs largely consisted of fact-checking the info the funeral homes frequently got wrong (incorrectly putting two t's in "Paterson, NJ," stuff like that). Of course, the papers have pretty much cut all those jobs as well.
Re:and some folks look for their own Obit (Score:3, Interesting)
Life is stranger then fiction: Californian man sends obituary to press before suicide [bbc.co.uk]
Re:and to take it a step further... (Score:5, Interesting)
Consider Craigslist vs. Ebay: Ebay wasn't a particularly mortal threat to classifieds(probably didn't help; but didn't seal their doom) because it tried to largely ignore location. That works fine for stuff that is quite valuable per unit weight, or obscure stuff that you can't get just anywhere, so you just have to suck up the shipping, or for stuff that is all shipped anyway, so cutting out the middleman is helpful.
Craigslist, on the other hand, has all the cheapness of being web based; but is explicitly location-centric. And it crushed the classifieds business like a bug(as with most bugs, the crushed remains are still crawling and twitching a bit, bugs are tough motherfuckers; but it is basically game over.)
It wouldn't exactly be rocket surgery to build a nationwide; but location-focused obituary mechanism. Once the present crop of old people are finished dying, it is not going to be pretty for the paper obituaries...
Re:Why publish a death notice? (Score:3, Interesting)
Costco sells respectable looking ones for a little under $1,000. Don't know if you have to buy a 3-pack, though.