Obituary notices just seem like a business
Posted by batshitcrazyfarmer@reddit | GenX | View on Reddit | 45 comments
This is a gripe, and maybe one I am not justified in having, so maybe someone can help me along to not being so frustrated.
It costs a lot of money to put an obituary in one of our local papers. Hundreds of dollars and if someone wants to put it in all papers it’s easily between $1000-$2000. And if anyone wants information on the viewing & funeral, if they search obituaries in one of the 7 papers, there’s no additional information, unless they subscribe to the paper, or pay money just to read that particular obituary. As we are getting older, more people are passing away, so how do we find out who passed, and not subscribe to 7 papers-or just the basic main 3?
Recently, 2 people we knew passed away. Somehow we got left out of the loop of the information passing along. I’m not on certain social media apps, so we miss out. With it being winter, crossing paths with people who chat isn’t common. I understand that newspapers run a business, but death notices, funerals, viewing information is just something I feel we shouldn’t be charged to find out. And how do we know which paper? Do I search all 7 each week?
Is anyone frustrated by this? I did see a group in one county on fb that listed the weekly deceased, but no other information and who knows if this week’s algorithm will let us view it.
My partner & I were talking about it this week. He works at a place where hundreds of people come through, so news & information flows. Imagine the old country store in town hundreds of years ago-it’s like that-but even still, some news is overlooked, especially if there’s something new that has everyone’s focus. He said he asked someone about their father recently & the person said he died last year. Ran into a neighbor at the cheese store who told him their neighbor-his friend-she died at Christmas, and we missed out paying our respects. I am usually one who isn’t in the loop, and have found myself so sad a year or two after someone passed. There just needs to be an easier system. It just feels inhumane how it is. How does everyone else find out who passed?
WhiplashMotorbreath@reddit
obits were always a fancy paid ad. news papers are dead.
I'd assume Facebook might be where most find out friends/family has passed. It doesn't make sense to pay for an obit in a news paper anymore other than the estates legal reasons at least till they are forced to change that law/regulations about estates.
batshitcrazyfarmer@reddit (OP)
Yes, the cost is so high now. And for someone who doesn't do fb, I miss the news most of the time.
I am going to guess that someone down the road will set up a website and charge money to view them all.
Right now, if I want to find out who died-which is not something I think to check-maybe 2x a year if I heard someone died-i see who died and then do a name search with obit attached. It's a hassle, but I am not paying to view the obit when the newspapers already charge so much money to the family to publish it. As for newspapers being dead, we all know this.. not my problem. I feel the same way I do with anything that is dead, they need to reinvent themselves. It's the way it goes. Until then, I guess we are stuck finding out who died in an easier way.
WhiplashMotorbreath@reddit
Issue is newspapers are dead, but estate laws/regulations to inform the family still is you must place an obit. That can be an issue i some cases.
I am on f/b but have no "friends" on there, I'm on there just to get the event info for the car hobby, as they all have move to posting about their cars and coffee/cruise nights/shows /etc on there.
So, Friends and Family members ,I don't get thier post on my feed, I would "friend" them but I don't want the daily drama, that doing that would bring to the feed. Too many over share, lets just say that.
So if they posted that someone passed on f/b. I'd never know.
LilJourney@reddit
You start out complaining about the cost of an obituary in the paper. Fair enough. I know it was a decent chunk of change when my mom passed, but it was during 2020 and important for me to have it say what it said to honor her memory even if long in the word count.
However, further down you comment you don't even read the obits in your paper - so how would having them cheaper or free help you find out about them anyway??
On the flipside - there are a couple of websites I know of - probably more - that show up when you google your city and the word obituary. Totally free and fairly easy to find. Most list the funeral arrangements or link to the funeral home and you can get the details on that site.
Beyond that - can't help you. If you're not on social media much or at all, the only real option is to regularly check a source ... online for free or subscribe to your paper.
batshitcrazyfarmer@reddit (OP)
Yes, I wasn't clear, exhausted I guess from working outside for 15+ hours a day.
We started the day trying to view 2 obituaries in the paper and they wanted a $1 each after charging the family to put one in. We have both had people close to us pass away and have paid such high prices to post their obits. No, we don't subscribe to any weekly or daily papers, the cost is super high to throw away a thin paper, and not worth it. The only thing we can do now is check the papers on-line for names listed as deceased, and then search their name and "obituary" to find the funeral home, which seems such a hassle if we don't hear about the death. Maybe I don't want to be morbid and check the death pages online all the time just in case.
I guess my point of this post was that community is long gone, and finding out who passed is more than just a public announcement, it has become so much even more a business-charging the family a high rate and then charging someone to view it who wants to pay their respects. It has really changed in the past 5 years and it will get worse. I know people who never bothered to put an obit in any paper, just because they didn't have the money-and we never put one in for my grandmother.
LilJourney@reddit
Hey, I think we were both tired when posting. I'm normally not so snippy.
The lack of community is real and it truly sucks. We're more "connected" in ever by theory but in reality we are all drifting farther away from each other.
I really am sorry for your loss and should have started with that. You were probably posting as much with frustration and grief as with tiredness and I applaud your grace in your response. I'm sorry your paper is charging to view the obits. Mine does not - and I was not aware that was not the same everywhere. Thank you for responding and sharing your experience.
batshitcrazyfarmer@reddit (OP)
Thanks for your response. I got so much hate over this post, it just makes my head spin. The crazy thing is, in a few months someone will bring up the same points and everyone will be discovering it as an "AH-HA" moment. I guess more is shifting away from connecting people within communities. I am not a conspiracy theorist, but have studied history, war, political theories, and well, if you want to control the masses, isolate them and divide them. We are falling right in there, it is all crumbling. It makes me sad and frustrated, and I want to have people notice what is going on, and maybe if we just say, no, and try to connect again, we will all be stronger.
And all of these "little things" add up-overcharging the family to put in an obituary, and then charging people who want to pay their respects money to read it. Algorithms on social media just show us memes from bots, and not the community news we signed up for and want to see. News and newspapers are skewed so we never know what actually is going on. We are all too busy to care about it all at the end of the day, but maybe, we should notice that the shift has already happened and we just accept it as the way things are going now. Yesterday I wanted to scream, and last night I put on a headlamp and did a 5 mile night time hike with the dogs across the fields in the snow, it cleared out all of that frustration I had pent up. Sending you hugs today, I hope you have a phenomenal day!
Disastrous_Ad_4149@reddit
With funeral homes it is possible to negotiate the price. As someone who worked for a small town newspaper briefly, there is a horrible markup. We were charging the funeral home in the early 2000s like $300 for the average size obituary. It was more expensive when people went nuts and wanted to publish 10,000 words and six photos. The funeral home was charging families $1,500 for an obituary. I had words with one funeral director who tried to charge my family that when an uncle passed away. His funeral home didn't even write the obituaries themselves, as took notes and sent those over to whoever was on desk duty in the newsroom to write. It was ridiculous.
Some people will try to bypass the funeral home and get a better price. Our newspaper stopped allowing that because of fraud. There were two incidents where someone was trying to get out of paying old debts and wanted to publish obituaries so their spouse (actually them) could show it as proof they were dead so the bill should be wiped clean. There was one guy who had warrants that tried that too. Lots of holes in that plan but people are stupid.
I keep track of some of it now by setting up a google alert that sends me alerts for classmates from college (plus a whole lot of other news about the college) or key names of people I may not be in touch with but still care about now. Funeral homes in my hometown always post their obituaries on their own website so I have set up a way to check updates there too if needed. There are some non funeral home sites like Obituaries dot com or some such name but they are usually rather late and past the funeral date before it is updated.
batshitcrazyfarmer@reddit (OP)
Thank you for your response. It really is not really a good system the way that it is. there are over 7 papers that cover areas of when I have lived, and I spend about 2x a year to scan the names and I am always surprised at how many I may have missed-even when I was regularly on social media, gotta thank the algorithms to not show the important news I guess.
I was thinking about this all while I was working yesterday how frustrating it is, and maybe someone who is programmer will come up with a business to come up with a website with all of deaths, I would sign up by the county to see the recent deaths and I would toss some money to that website each year, I am sure many others would. As newspapers are really fading without reinventing themselves, maybe that will be the future.
aqaba_is_over_there@reddit
First time you have to plan a funeral you will figure out that death is a business.
Worst part is the mailings you get from what I assume is public death records.
batshitcrazyfarmer@reddit (OP)
I buried my partner not long ago and a few others, the price of an obituary has really gone up in price in the past few years. And yes, death is a business, the point I was making is now to view the obit in the paper it costs money..
runjeanmc@reddit
I believe it has to do with getting stuff out of probate and executing the will. From what I remember hearing, there has to be some sort of public notice.
I could be totally wrong, but this was the scuttlebutt around my granny-in-law's ex-husband's obit. He was estranged and there was a whole lot of mess about the whole thing. I dunno 🤷 I try my best to stay out of it.
BitterPillPusher2@reddit
The public notice for those things is separate from the will.
runjeanmc@reddit
I assumed "public notice" was an obit.
Thanks for the comment. I trust it will help someone more ignorant than I am 😂
MyriVerse2@reddit
Typically, an obit is just a special type of personal ad that relatives choose to do or not. Most of my family has never even bothered.
runjeanmc@reddit
Then what's a public notice of death?
BitterPillPusher2@reddit
It's basically a legal notification to anyone who may have a claim to or against the estate.
runjeanmc@reddit
I guess I always conflated that with an obit. Thanks!
contrarian1970@reddit
Newspapers are OUT...these days, the largest funeral home within 40 miles of you can post all the same info to it's website for free. Mine even allows ten minute slide shows for free. It's good publicity for that funeral home.
tragicsandwichblogs@reddit
My brother and I didn't publish an obituary when my father died, and I have no idea what the cost would have been.
luffybalvideo@reddit
I always check on this website it really helps me find people and see new people who passed away https://www.fast-memorial.blog/
tragicsandwichblogs@reddit
What a strange URL.
Automatic_Fun_8958@reddit
It costs more to leave this world than it does to come into it.
MyriVerse2@reddit
New Orleans only has one newspaper and an obit starts at about $50 for a single weekday.
BillDuki@reddit
I look at my hometown obits everyday. You can see who died, but the details are usually behind a paywall. I say “usually” because their website sucks and they require an account about 80% of the time, and the other 20% everything is free. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, it just happens. If I see someone I’m interested in and it’s behind the wall, I just google their name with “obituary” after it and it usually shows up elsewhere.
VinylHighway@reddit
Is it a business
NVJAC@reddit
I did 25 years in local newspapers. Normally to run a death notice (where you just give the basics of who died and when/where the funeral/visitation was going to be) was free. An obituary (where you got into who their parents were, what their hobbies were, etc) was paid.
pdx_mom@reddit
But would you have seen them if they were in the paper?
batshitcrazyfarmer@reddit (OP)
I’m not sure what you mean, but of course we glance at the obits if a paper is around. But we don’t subscribe to newspapers any longer. They are expensive, and don’t contain much value.
Ok_Armadillo9924@reddit
Our local paper has a free website. Don’t most papers? Even if they’re small and local? That’s how most people found out about my father’s death - through the obituaries online.
batshitcrazyfarmer@reddit (OP)
We can still see for free the name of someone who died-but if we click on the name-there is a cost to read/see etc. Things are changing.
MaximumJones@reddit
I did not know that newspapers still existed.
BitterPillPusher2@reddit
Newspapers are a dying medium. TBH, I'm surprised most of them are still able to stay afloat. Obituaries are one of the few ways they are still able to make money, so they have to charge that much just to keep the lights on.
batshitcrazyfarmer@reddit (OP)
And people never find out who died because newspapers can’t find a way to reinvent themselves. Makes no sense to me, and I’m guessing as the boomers die in droves this may change…
Gern_Blanston_420@reddit
When my father died in 1988 I paid $12 for his obit to appear in the local paper and the Washington Post. It’s gotten ridiculous since then.
Affectionate-Map2583@reddit
I think my dad's ended up being $1200 in the Washington post. It had a small black and white picture and was maybe 2"x 4" total size. It's ridiculously expensive.
batshitcrazyfarmer@reddit (OP)
Yes, $500 now
Bill_maaj1@reddit
How many people actually receive the paper?
airckarc@reddit
Obituaries were always paid, unless it’s an article about a notable person. But those articles aren’t really obituaries, so the family can’t control what’s written. Normal obituaries are written and paid for by the family or friends.
If you want local information, subscribe to a local paper. Obituaries and public announcements are one of the things keeping local media alive.
If you don’t want to pay, your local library will have the local papers.
twirlingmypubes@reddit
Wasn't it free back in the day?
batshitcrazyfarmer@reddit (OP)
News of the dead? I don’t know. All I know is that in the past decade when I had to submit an obituary the cost has been near $500.
twirlingmypubes@reddit
I could have sworn they were free. Personals Shays cost money, but obituaries were newsworthy events for the community. Boy, how things have changed
batshitcrazyfarmer@reddit (OP)
Oh-but if you go to the web pages of funeral homes, you can read most of them there most of the time. I have zero interest looking up 20-30 funeral homes each week. It’s madness
batshitcrazyfarmer@reddit (OP)
Yes-and this happened before Covid. Imagine a few thousand to put a few obituaries in local papers. And now-newspapers charging $1 and up to READ the obituary.
Glass-Nectarine-3282@reddit
Obits were never free.
You would pay cheap money for a small death notice, and then the obit was more expensive depending on how elaborate you wanted it to be.
It was actually a major revenue stream, since there were no online funeral homes, etc. Now, the funeral home can post it, but of course that's part of the funeral expense. So whether it was a newspaper obit or the funeral home, it cost money.
It's funny how people think stuff magically showed up when it was all part of a fairly intricate economic infrastructure that our parents understood - now when it's our friends dying, we're like "what's going on?" and it tracks back to when we didn't want to pay for a newspaper subscription. Good job Gen-X, good effort.