Otterblog

I have gotten a ton of calls in the past three or four weeks about changes to our obituaries page(s). While the obits are only partially a responsibility of the newsroom, the distinction is often lost on many readers. So let me try to explain what has gone on.

First, the obits themselves. We run two types: free and paid. Free obits are shorter, with the basics.  Everybody who wants one gets one. It’s a public service. Paid obits are longer. Because they are paid, they are essentially advertising, and as with most of our advertisers, the people paying the bill have much greater leeway in what they want to say. Journalists always say somebody died. Paid obits might have a person passing, succumbing, going to their reward, etc.

The obits—free and paid—are put into our system by our team of obituary writers. It’s an exacting job, and we have a good crew. A typo in a story is bad, but misspelling Aunt Millie’s name in an obit is much, much worse. These folks have been in administrative limbo for years, with one foot in the newsroom, the other in classified advertising. This year, we switched to a new ad-management system, and it made sense to stop the dual-reporting. The obit team will soon be entirely in classified. The new system has forced us to revise the look of our obituaries and the obit box itself, but we understand the importance of the index and the page itself. We want the same thing that readers want: an obituary page that is informative and useful.

As the joke goes, “I read it every morning to make sure I’m not in it...”