Profiting from death

By Geoff Dougherty | Oct 30, 11:24 AM

Frequent readers will notice that I haven't posted to the blog in several weeks. I was at the Online News Association conference (more on that later), and as I was heading back to Chicago I found out that my father had died of a heart attack.

In the 10 days since that happened, I've learned a few things about the intersection of the news biz and death.

First, obituaries are really important. I've probably written a few hundred in my career, and I doubt that I've given more than 10 minutes of thought to any of them.

But obits deserve more attention. They're rooted in the idea that everyone is entitled to a public accounting of their lives -- where they were born, whom they married, the children they raised and the jobs they held. It's an egalitarian process that gives everyone, even those who didn't make the newspaper while they were alive, their 15 minutes of fame.

A well-crafted obit, like the one Patricia Sullivan of the Washington Post wrote about my dad, distills and preserves the essence of that person for posterity. I'll read that obit in 20 years and it will likely remind me of things I'd forgotten about my father. A researcher who delves into Mel Fisher's fantastic treasure finds will know that my father was Mel's lawyer, and gain at least a smidgen of insight into his personality.

Obits also serve another function: Telling friends, neighbors and community members about the death, and letting them know when the services are.

Or at least that's the way it should happen. But too often these days, news organizations fall down on the job in this regard.

The Post's policy dictates that obits will not mention the time and date of the funeral service.

But the Post was far, far classier than the Bradford Era, the paper that covers my dad's hometown.

After I sent the Era some obit information, I got a call from a staffer there.

The paper would be happy to publish the fact that my father had passed away, and that he was born in Bradford. If I wanted the notice to contain information about his career and college attended, I'd have to purchase a 'deluxe' death notice. If I wanted information about my dad's survivors and the details about the memorial service to appear in his hometown paper, I'd have to buy the 'extended' notice, which was even more expensive.

I never imagined that a newspaper would be sleazy enough to base the information it publishes about a community member's death on the amount of money the survivors are willing to pay. It strikes me that the Post, too, is engaged in the same game, though to a lesser degree. If my family wants folks in D.C. to know about my dad's memorial service, we've got to buy a death notice.

Memo to publishers: If you want to be liked, respected and read in your community, stop viewing death as a profit center. For God's sake, don't try to upsell the bereaved when they contact you about an obit. Start serving your community. When one of your readers dies, write a decent obit about it -- one that includes information on his job, family, education, passions and accomplishments, and mentions the time, date and location of the memorial service.

If you fail to do this you will soon become irrelevant, because some guy with a blog will start publishing the info you won't.

My father's memorial service is Nov. 19 at 3 p.m. in the Bethlehem Chapel of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

Tagged: media, obituaries