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Old 04-04-2018, 08:04 PM
 
Location: Covington, KY
1,898 posts, read 2,735,707 times
Reputation: 607

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Would like to know what people in the area look for in ordinary people's newspaper obituaries.

Personally, I don't see much point in a newspaper obit apart from connections to the likes of Legacy.com. The matter came up among some friends (we're old enough to think about such things).

Wrote me what I thought would be an okay and cheap as possible obit. Friends thought it nice enough.

Thereafter, what occurred to me was, would anyone (most likely amid a younger age group) be interested in someone's online activity, such as: "City-Data Forums contributor with Reputation of 50,000"?

"Long time Cincinnati advocate and activist" might amount to the same thing but it's not specific.

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Old 04-05-2018, 06:52 AM
 
649 posts, read 808,863 times
Reputation: 1239
Frankly, after running an obituary last year in the Enquirer I am hesitant about ever doing it again. It cost our family $800 to run my mother's obituary for ONE DAY! After the boomers die off I can't imagine anything that would effectively reach more loved ones than a facebook obituary. And if your obit is online-only I would imagine that your internet presence and activity is relevant to the community of readers.
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Old 04-05-2018, 08:45 AM
 
25 posts, read 22,323 times
Reputation: 58
If somebody puts my obit on Facebook I will haunt them through eternity in the hereafter.
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Old 04-05-2018, 10:12 AM
 
Location: Covington, KY
1,898 posts, read 2,735,707 times
Reputation: 607
Quote:
Originally Posted by SalamanderSmile View Post
Frankly, after running an obituary last year in the Enquirer I am hesitant about ever doing it again. It cost our family $800 to run my mother's obituary for ONE DAY! After the boomers die off I can't imagine anything that would effectively reach more loved ones than a facebook obituary. And if your obit is online-only I would imagine that your internet presence and activity is relevant to the community of readers.
Thanks for the comment. $800 ?! The one quote I heard was $500, and even that sounded unreasonable for a couple of inches of space on a back page.

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Old 04-05-2018, 02:40 PM
 
2,886 posts, read 4,950,659 times
Reputation: 1508
I need to search out and read obits sometimes for my work. My first stop is the funeral home's site where I usually find all the info I need. Sometimes I need to Google to get that. Not sure if those are all reprints of newspaper obits, though.
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Old 04-05-2018, 05:01 PM
 
Location: Covington, KY
1,898 posts, read 2,735,707 times
Reputation: 607
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sarah Perry View Post
I need to search out and read obits sometimes for my work. My first stop is the funeral home's site where I usually find all the info I need. Sometimes I need to Google to get that. Not sure if those are all reprints of newspaper obits, though.
The ones I've looked up, that being people like very distant family, as I recall, were newspaper connections to the likes of Legacy.com.

I mentioned the connecting and prices (especially the one SalamanderSmile mentioned above) to one of the people who brought up the matter. She said she was going to investigate whether you had to start with a newspaper ad. Funeral home is all right if they keep such records and you know what funeral home, but that isn't the same as a public notice.
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Old 04-08-2018, 08:14 PM
 
Location: East Walnut Hills
204 posts, read 741,053 times
Reputation: 171
I know it is blasphemous, and I hate it as much as most everyone else, but I find out about most of my friends' deaths, and, even worse, close family, via Facebook. I don't even get a courtesy call anymore. It seriously upsets me. But, apparently, it is the future, and I am not "up with the times".

That being said, I think that the newspaper obituary is now more about paying for a keepsake. And connecting on sites like Legacy.com.
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Old 04-08-2018, 08:32 PM
 
Location: ✶✶✶✶
15,218 posts, read 30,415,301 times
Reputation: 10846
This is another terrible angle of the consequences of local print media's slow death, for which nobody will be there to write its obituary.



Typing obituaries was often farmed out to me during my newsroom internship. At that time (1999) there was a charge for obituaries but it was about $10 on average and small stuff compared to the greater cost of burying someone. Until a couple years before I started, the paper ran obits for free, though they were pretty minimal. "David Smith died Thursday, April 6 in Middletown. Services will be at noon Sunday at Middletown Funeral Home" was about the size of it.

When they were paid, the family or funeral home wrote it and only typographical errors were changed for the most part. The newspaper's business model was still solvent enough to pay for staff, including high school kid interns even. But now with the print advertising and classified revenue out of the gutter they have to resort to charging inflated rates to run what used to run for nothing.

The worst part about it is stuff like the ancestry pages, and genealogy in general, uses newspaper birth announcements and obituaries extensively, and social media (often restricted from access to the user's "friends") is not a substitute.
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