Monday night I criticized a Pennsylvania newspaper’s plan to charge loyal online readers to read the obituaries. Today I want to suggest a more innovative, future-focused approach to obituaries.
I was interested that Ernie Schreiber, editor of the Intelligencer Journal-Lancaster New Era, cited my Newspaper Next experience in scolding me for Monday’s post. He clearly had an awareness that N2 was about innovation, but (like many of his peers in the newspaper business) he did not learn the core principles of disruptive innovation that we taught in N2.
One of the fundamental lessons of N2, based on the disruptive-innovation research of Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen, was that innovation opportunities rest in identifying “jobs to be done,” needs people have. Innovators who provide welcome solutions to those jobs are on the path to success, Christensen says.
Schreiber and I can disagree about whether his plan will work and whether he’s trying to “double-dip on death” by charging families to publish the obituary and then charging frequent online obituary readers to read the digital version. That’s a valid argument, based on speculation and differing values. But what is clear from what Schreiber has said is that the solution LancasterOnline is trying was developed solely in the interest of the news organization. No consumers were wishing someone would develop a way for them to pay for reading online obituaries.
This is about bringing in revenue, not about doing a job for anyone outside the company. But obituaries do represent an important (and potentially valuable) job to be done.
Whenever a loved one dies, family members want to tell friends near and far about the deceased. They want a final account of the person’s life, for the written and online record, for children too young to remember the person lost, for friends who’ve lost touch, for generations yet to come.
And what these people want is something better than the formulaic obituary that newspapers used to run for free, on the honest rationale that every death is news. I have written and edited hundreds of such stories. The most terrifying moment of my career was when, as a young editor at the Des Moines Register, I learned that the subject of an obit I had written and edited the night before was alive and well. (Actually, just alive – he had a mental issue that prompted him to call in the obit.)
I have heard and made the argument that obituaries are news stories, an argument I read again on Twitter yesterday as people were discussing my exchange with Schreiber:
palafo @stevebuttry Charging families to write and publish obits is problematic in the first place. Obits should be news, accurate, warts and all. ljthornton Agree RT @palafo @stevebuttry Charging families 2 write, publish obits problematic in 1st place. Obits should be news, accurate, warts & all
I have differed here before with Patrick LaForge (@palafo above) of the New York Times, but Times obituaries are splendid news stories (for years, I have used Douglas Martin’s obituary of Selma Koch in workshops as an example of an outstanding lead). My journalist’s heart is with LaForge here. But newspaper executives have been making too many decisions with their hearts.
The fact is, the Times doesn’t run such news stories on every death in New York. And every death is huge news to a lot of people. The death of my 16-year-old nephew, Patrick, was the biggest story of 2009 for most of my family and for many of his friends.
But the truth is that most obituaries make lousy news stories. If not written by the family, obituaries usually are dry, just-the-facts summaries that utterly fail at capturing the life of the person who is being grieved.
If you want to identify the job-to-be-done in a straight-news, formulaic obituary, it is “Tell me who has died in the community.” That job has value, but the job of giving a boring list of facts about a person who just died has never been a valuable job. That formulaic news story that most news organizations do, if they don’t charge for obits, doesn’t come close to doing the bigger job of telling the story of a person’s life.
Some newspapers started writing “feature obits” about a few especially newsworthy people. Or, if no major figures died that day, an obit writer might spin a tale about an ordinary person who died. Enough newspapers still write feature obits that the Society of Professional Obituary Writers still meets annually. (My friend Kay Powell, formerly of the Atlanta Journal Constitution, deservedly won the Lifetime Achievement Award.) But these ordinary people featured in such obits are chosen at random or by the judgment of the writer. Most people grieving in that community didn’t get that sort of treatment for their loved ones. (And, as newsholes and staff have shrunk, such treatment is becoming increasingly rare.)
I think news organizations are missing an extraordinary opportunity by failing to address the job-to-be-done in telling the story – the full, rich story – of the deceased.
News organizations should provide multiple levels of life stories about the recently deceased (two free, but the rest funded by the family):
- The news story: A prominent person in town dies. A reporter does the story, just as you do now. This is strictly a matter of news judgment. The family can cooperate with the story or not, but you’ll write it at no charge.
- The death notice. This would be a free, formulaic announcement produced from an online template where an authorized funeral home can fill in basic facts: name, age, residence, services, survivors, occupation, employer (if working), perhaps a few others.
- The family-written obituary. This allows for sentimental writing (“passed away” or “went to be with the angels” rather than “died,” as the news story would say) and as much history as the family wants. Family (or funeral home) writes, family pays by the word.
- The family-submitted video. Families would be invited to compose their own video tribute to the deceased. I would suggest hosting family-submitted videos at no charge, but offering editing/production services for a fee, with families providing home videos, pictures, basic facts, etc.
- Commissioned obituary. Some families don’t have anyone with writing ability or don’t want to take the time to write obits in their hour of grief. A news organization could charge for a staff writer to write an obituary of about 1,000 words, based on two or three hours of interviews with family and friends. Almost any reporter could do this job.
- Epic-tale obituary. My friend Ken Fuson wrote fabulous stories about people’s lives, often after famous or otherwise interesting people in our community had died. They weren’t obits, they were news stories. But Ken has a gift for telling the epic tale of a person’s life and telling it quickly. I told him many times that whenever I go, I want Ken writing my obit. Well, Ken’s retired from the newspaper business (though still available for freelancing; here’s an idea, Ken), and writers of his talent are rare. But most news staffs have (or recently bought out) some pretty good old-school storytellers who might relish a job writing interesting stories with no space restriction. These tales might take 2-3 days, but that’s usually the wait for a funeral anyway. Maybe you offer this as a threefold product: booklet (or special limited-run newspaper) for the funeral, obituary-length story in the newspaper and epic-length story that stays forever online. For an elderly person or someone with a terminal illness, you could commission the epic in advance, giving more time to work on it. This could be a present for the living on an 80th or 100th birthday party or 50th wedding anniversary, with part of the package being an update for the obituary.
- Video produced for the family. The news organization can interview family members and friends (perhaps in a side room at the wake), adding photos, home videos and such provided by the family for a professional-quality video obituary. Again, this option could be used while someone is alive and quickly updated after the person dies.
Numbers 3-7 all would provide a welcome service that would do a valued job for grieving family members. The fee for #3 would be fairly low, with modest charges for 4 and 5, hefty charges (but still not the most expensive part of funeral-related costs) for 6 and 7. In each case, the family wouldn’t feel exploited. A free option would be available, and the fee would be related to value and service provided.
The news organization can and should make provisions for the tributes stay online in perpetuity, even if the company folds. Legacy.com annoys loved ones (and even friends) with pitches to pay keep tributes from disappearing after a while, so news organizations would have a chance to turn the tables on disruption. Perhaps archiving costs could be covered by a 99-cent charge for friends and family wanting to add their own memories (by charging, you establish verified identity, which would significantly reduce inappropriate comments). Or the family could receive a password they could share with trusted relatives and friends, allowing them to comment at no cost. I would suggest that you calculate archiving costs and make annual or quarterly donations above that cost to the most popular memorial funds in your community (and state online that you’re doing this and not trying to profit from the charge to comment.)
This would be a business venture that would provide value that might not leave you vulnerable to a free-obit service, a possibility my TBD colleague Jeff Sonderman outlined in a blog post. Free obits would disrupt #3 above, but many families might be glad to pay for the higher-value story or videos described above.
The revenue potential for this approach is far more than even the most optimistic projections Schreiber shared for the LancasterOnline paywall. It would not be proper for me to share propietary information from a former employer. But I do feel comfortable saying that I have been involved in changing an obituary policy to increase the use of paid obituaries (with nothing beyond level 3 above) and I have seen the revenue figures. I can say that paid obituaries, even without these measures I have outlined here, bring in far more revenue than their costs. In a small or mid-sized metro area, this approach could easily support a staff of two or three journalists, maybe more, with a solid profit margin. In a larger metro area, you could support a sizable staff.
Would this have ethical issues to address? You bet. News organizations might need to treat the paid content at advertorial, labeling it somewhere as family-funded. Maybe this staff would have to be set up as distinct from the newsroom. You could set some ground rules, though, insisting on accuracy.
The fees paid by families would not be the only potential revenue sources. You could handle orders of flowers from local florists and make reservations at local hotels for out-of-town mourners, collecting advertising and/or transaction fees. You could collect memorial donations to provide further value (I wouldn’t recommend taking any profit from the donations, though you could and should cover processing costs).
Have I worked out the details of this plan? No. This goes beyond the memorial idea I proposed last year, when I was working at a newspaper company and was pushing a broader innovative approach. It’s probably not going to be high on our list of TBD projects, because our digital audience is likely to be younger than a newspaper’s print audience. And we don’t have the existing relationships with funeral homes and obituary readers that a newspaper organization has. Someone executing this plan would probably add some ideas I have missed here and rule out some impractical suggestions I’ve made.
But here’s an idea I know is practical: Start your innovation efforts by finding jobs you can do for your community.
makes sense – especially the bit about writing a story before they are dead – for birthdays, anniversaries etc…
thats a real good idea… by extension – a minor league sports team has a really good year – maybe not a “news” story – but something a good writer could nonetheless make into an interesting story
people are always dieing to have these types of stories told – but will they pay? hmmm
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Steve, these are all good points. For a look at the kinds of “jobs to be done” that exist in the obituary space, you or your readers might like to check out a comprehensive report that a team of Medill School of Journalism students produced last fall. It’s linked from the blog the students produced: http://www.obitresearch.com.
The project was sponsored by Legacy.com, so some of the key recommendations are for what Legacy should do to serve these “jobs.” But many recommendations also address newspapers.
The students’ key insight was that there are (at least) four separate kinds of people who have “jobs to be done” in the area of obituaries, death notices and online memorials:
* Family members of the deceased seeking to publish information about their loved one.
* Acquaintances of the deceased who wish to learn more about the life of a person they knew, and find details about the funeral, visitation and burial.
* Hobbyist/fans – participants in clubs, organizations or other affinity groups. These people are seeking to learn about the life and death of a given group of individuals – sports stars, for instance, or well-known artists – who relate to their interests. They may also want to connect and communicate with others who share their interests.
* Obituary enthusiasts who appreciate obituaries for their storytelling, find the form of writing interesting, and seek out obituary content regularly. They want interesting stories of people they may never have known, told in a compelling way. They may be interested in obituaries for educational or research purposes as well.
Each group has different “jobs.” In the past, newspapers addressed all of them via obituaries and/or paid death notices. As with many other aspects of our society, new technology creates challenges and opportunities. Using obituaries as a paid-content play is, as you rightly point out, not responding to any real consumer needs or “jobs.”
More from me on this topic on the Poynter.org site:
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=31&aid=181166
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Thanks, Rich. I had forgotten about your report (which I think was in a stack of stuff to read someday when I left Cedar Rapids; no idea whether it made the move). Maybe something to read on my commute someday (when I’m not writing my next blog post).
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Your idea of layered approaches is sensitive, versatile and clear — and carries with it ways to make transparent how the obit came to be. For me, paid obits are problematic not because of the charge itself but because there’s often no way to tell where the obit came from. All the levels you’ve described above have their value. Where the greatest value is to the news organization (and, one might argue, to the public), the obit should be free. I think that is reflected in what you’ve proposed. As for charging people to read obits – well, that seems counterproductive from the get-go and even, albeit unintentionally, somewhat mean. I fully agree with your suggestion that wide readership is potentially more lucrative for both the news organization and the community than closed readership could ever be.
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I would agree that #4 and #5 would definitely have to be considered advertorial, and as such, needs a separate staff member from the newsroom. I know I wouldn’t want it. I still cringe thinking about a really bad typo I wrote in the obit story of a 11-year-old girl who died of cancer.
I would say also providing the option of a simple photo slideshow as opposed to a video of photos would be worthwhile.
Here’s another question: We talk a lot about death notices, but have we considered doing the same for birth announcements? Hospitals have cut back significantly on providing birth announcement information, citing privacy concerns. When I was born in ’83, my birth announcement was 2-3 grafs long. A child born in 2010 is lucky to get their last name, their parents name, and their gender.
It seems to be that a well-done tiered system of paid birth announcements could work just as well as a paid obit system, maybe even better because you’re not dealing with the sometimes sensitive issue of death.
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Robert,
You’re absolutely right. This was part of my C3 plan last year: http://bit.ly/DnlbB
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The words “business model” and “obituaries” don’t belong in the same sentence, particularly if you are a small town newspaper.
There are many reasons why newspapers are in trouble, and I put near the top of the list charging grieving families for obituaries. In a small town, they are news — period.
Obituaries should not a profit center and treating them as such alienates your readers and breeds ill will in the community.
I speak from the experience of watching the daily paper I worked for impose a paid obituary policy. Families chose to do without, rather than pay $200 for a 10-inch obituary. The paper’s obit page has never recovered. Both the families, and the community, are the losers.
And all this, just for the sake of a few more ad dollars.
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Thanks for your thoughtful response, Randolph.
You are absolutely correct that business considerations are different for a small-town news organization and in a metro area (note that I discussed doing this in a metro news organization).
However, “business model” is a consideration for every part of a sustainable operation. Unless you produce obits with volunteer labor and print them on donated paper with free ink, you always had a business model for obituaries and pretending that you didn’t is fantasy, and newspapers have operated too much by fantasy recently.
That doesn’t mean that everything you do has to generate revenue directly. Perhaps (as in the editorial page) the right measure is to do something for its good will value or for community service, and subsidize that part of the operation with stronger margins elsewhere, or sell advertising (or sell products or services online) for people who want their message placed near the obits, as I described with flowers and hotel reservations.
Just because some news organizations implemented paid obits clumsily doesn’t mean that they aren’t a good idea and that some families don’t embrace them. When I arrived in Cedar Rapids, we offered free and paid obits (and an odd hybrid that i won’t even explain). The free obit read like a news story and was written by a staffer according to our formulaic style. And many families chose to pay instead to tell the story themselves. No one felt forced to pay anything, but the paid obit did a valuable job and many gladly chose to do so. When we switched, offering a free death notice or a paid obit (if we decided a death was newsworthy, we wrote a story), most chose the paid obit with little complaint.
Christensen’s research has shown again and again that when you offer a welcome solution to a job that is important to people, you can build a business around that solution. Florists, greeting cards and funeral directors do it. So can news organizations.
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FWIW, here’s my worry about paid-only obits (and I did not originally think this up; Mike McCullough, the editor of the Battle Creek Enquirer in Michigan, is the one who first mentioned it to me): When only those who can afford it run an obit, is the newspaper truly still an honest record of its entire community? Or only those in the community who had money? As mentioned above, this is particularly an issue in smaller communities. My personal opinion is that newspapers have a responsibility here, and if they move to paid-only obits they’re not really living up to that.
A potential solution might be to provide a certain amount of space for every obit for free, charge for space beyond that limit, and let the family write the obit in every case. If they can fit everything into the allocated free space, fine; if they want to buy extra space, that’s fine too. That way every family, even those who can’t afford to pay, get an opportunity to run the obit they want, and every member of the community still has the opportunity to be memorialized in the local paper. Seems to me this would keep the newspaper a little truer to its mission than the paid-only option does.
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This is exactly what the multi-tiered option I describe would do: Death notice w/ basic facts is free. Families who want more have a choice of services and fees.
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Actually, I think yours might be just a little different. I’m proposing that even the basic notice be written by the family, so it would likely be more than just “basic facts.” Every family should have the opportunity to memorialize their loved one as they wish, and I don’t see the rationale behind some newspapers’ rule that “if you want it for free, we have to write it for you.” I prefer something like, “We invite you to write an obituary for your loved one. The first xxx words [E: and maybe a basic headshot] are on us.”
Or am I misunderstanding what you’re proposing?
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[…] > Buttry: A possible new business model for obituaries > Slate makes a case for long-form web journalism > LAW’s Pelisek has been on Grim Sleeper […]
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Why is there so much ca-chinging around this item? Of course obits are waiting to take their rightful place in the new media. The boomers are coming! I’m on the leading edge and find obits to be more and more fascinating. But I see them as happening on websites devoted to obits with the Ken Fusons of the world submitting them, in whatever form, from all necks of the woods. Advertisers would have nicely targeted audiences, and newspapers and other media could dip in, for a fee?, to bring the reports home to their local readers.
Or how about a sort of Facebook for the dead? Or should Facebook prepare a subsidiary for its no-longer-with-us members? Or they could market Facebook as a way to present a living memorial for people heading out, while at the same time constructing the makings of a killer obit. Or what about tweetdeads? Somebody else can think about that.
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Our family loved ones have been going to be with Jesus and leaving behind their beloved Fluffy the cat for almost two decades and paying for every inch. We had two “jobs to be done”: let families weave their own tales, making them happy and increasing readership; and, strengthen the revenue stream. Slam dunk from day one. Newsroom handles every one from first contact to final billing (and the occasional adjustment).
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Steve, your perception of the need for financial justification to support any private operation is a good one. And your perception of the newspaper industry as engulfed in Christensen-ian disruption is also appropos as it dying the same death as the other dinosaurs that Christensen has made examples of in the past.
I would suggest, however, that the expectation of finding any real value in adopting a single implementation guideline associated with Disruptive Innovation (identify a job that needs to be done) in the context of this (or any other) dinosaur is much like expecting the condition of a terminally ill cancer patient to improve as a result of changes in dental hygiene. Although the quandary you raise surrounding how to manage obituaries may be indicative of the policies which brought this dinosaur to its knees, the current context relegates it to being such a small item as to create more of a distraction than a help.
One final word on this – Although it may seem admirable on the part of those who value venerable artifacts of posterity to save the newsprint dinosaur, it may not even be within the realm of possibility to do so as there are no real cases of these types of dinosaurs getting a second life. There are examples of them staving off inevitable death for a time, but for an industry in this condition to actually disrupt itself has only happened a handful of times – and even then, that which remains thereafter is seldom a direct descendant of that which preceded before.
Thanks for the thought-provoking article and the opportunity to chime in.
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Rick,
The challenges that you describe for the newspaper industry are indeed dire. I don’t believe I have ever minimized them. In fact, I have been accused of taking too pessimistic a view of the future (on this very series of blog posts, though I can’t recall whether the remarks I’m recalling were public or in a private email).
However, I do see better possibilities for newspapers than the extinction you describe. Christensen cites the example of Target thriving in the age of discounters, a spinoff from department-store dinosaur Dayton Hudson. And he notes how severely AT&T was disrupted by mobile phones, but somehow it has survived and even thrives (despite crappy coverage, I must say, as an iPhone user), thanks to its exclusive deal with Apple (another survivor of severe disruption).
At the risk of indulging another metaphor (a fondness I admitted in today’s post on academic research), I think that the bald eagle in the 1960s might be a better metaphor here than the dinosaur. It’s not bound for extinction, but dramatic steps are needed to lead a revival. (And don’t make the leap that I’m supporting government subsidies. The eagle was incapable of helping itself. I believe newspapers can help themselves.)
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Hi Steve and thanks for your prompt and salient response.
I’d ask your indulgence to consider one additional thought – which is that although the bankruptcy of incumbent oligarchic firms is prima facie evidence of Disruptive Innovation (capitalized to refer specifically to then Christensen doctrine rather than colloquial use of the term), such evidence remains corollary to the actual event. In specific, the core concern of Disruptive Innovation is the INDUSTRY being examined (such as the ‘newspaper industry’) rather than the individual organizations that make up that industry (although these become less distinguishable when the industry is dominated by an oligarchy).
The land-line-based telecommunications industry (ATT’s ‘survival’ notwithstanding) has in fact been as decimated as it could be by cellular communication – with the final nails in the incumbent coffin currently being applied by VOIP. (Christensen does yeoman’s work in his books explaining how the regulatory requirement of interoperability saved the land-line industry from becoming extinct more immediately.)
In like manner, the discount store industry has decimated the department store industry, and although as you mention, Dayton Hudson as an individual organization has ‘survived’ in the new form of Target, one must consider that in these and other such cases, despite the survival of specific organizational trade names – the employees, customers, suppliers, affiliations, and shareholders of the transformed organizations are (for good reason) entirely different than those associated with the incumbent – and therefore represent disruption, despite having a legally traceable lineage.
It’s very much like people and their descendants – giving your children your name (and even all of your worldly assets) will not transfer your skills or values or the relationships you depend on to make your way in this world. (Having these would not be sufficient for them to make and keep their way in a changed world in any case.)
Similarly, if one or two newspapers (or members of any other industry in the throes of disruption) successfully invest in their own replacement(s), they (by definition) will still not have succeeded in maintaining the widespread application of that which makes them ‘better’ or of higher quality (with respect to the existing market) than their replacement. The descendants will be obliged to adopt new standards and for the most part the incumbent legacy will be lost no matter what the name of the prior or current organization. Disruption will have occurred, no matter how much similarity there may be between the names of the entrants and their incumbent predecessors.
For your consideration – with continued appreciation for the opportunity to express.
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[…] Steve Buttry I don’t expect newspaper companies to follow the advice I offered Wednesday for a new business model for obituaries. Why should newspapers start following my advice […]
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[…] Posts Academics measure new media (again) by old-media yardstickA possible new business model for obituariesJobless journalists could find a business model in obituariesKay Powell knows the power of details […]
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Similarly, if one or two newspapers (or members of any other industry in the throes of disruption) successfully invest in their own replacement(s), they (by definition) will still not have succeeded in maintaining the widespread application of that which makes them ‘better’ or of higher quality (with respect to the existing market) than their replacement
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[…] Some, Dot-com bust exposed an armada of good “look-and-feel” online companies, which had no working/sustainable business model and were a mere fluff in the market. But it is not only dot-coms that fail to conceive a deeper value in their offer. Some traditional businesses (such as newspapers), which branch out into online, blur their existing business models (by charging for access to obituaries while charging fee from those who choose to put them in the pa…). […]
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[…] as a service. As I wrote recently in discussing a possible new business model for obituaries, news organizations or individual journalists could build a business that would include professional-quality life […]
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[…] I do want to say is that I later noted that news organizations and individual journalists face a great opportunity to develop a new business telling life stories […]
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[…] models for news continue to be popular topics for readers of the blog. A possible new business model for obituaries was my seventh most-popular post of 2010 (and related posts about LancasterOnline’s plan to […]
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[…] A possible new business model for obituaries […]
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[…] A possible new business model for obituaries […]
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[…] commissioned life stories instead of formulaic obituaries. I proposed this last summer and I am not aware of anyone who is trying it. You start with […]
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[…] A probable new organization model for obituaries. The Buttry Diary. (n.d.). The Buttry Diary. Retrieved August 31, 2010, from https://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/a-possible-new-organization-design-for-obituaries/ […]
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[…] A possible new business model for obituaries. The Buttry Diary. (n.d.). The Buttry Diary. Retrieved August 31, 2010, from https://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/a-possible-new-business-model-for-obituaries/ […]
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[…] A possible new business model for obituaries. The Buttry Diary. (n.d.). The Buttry Diary. Retrieved August 31, 2010, from https://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/a-possible-new-business-model-for-obituaries/ […]
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[…] Taking a different approach to obituaries (and other life stories) […]
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[…] Offer commissioned life stories instead of formulaic obituaries. […]
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[…] also showed this chart on advertising revenues, adjusted for inflation, and mentioned my idea for a new business model for obituaries (and other life stories) and my Blueprint for the Complete Community Connection, specifically the […]
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[…] more topics that came up during the discussion that relate to other posts I’ve done: obituaries and […]
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[…] 2010 proposal for a new approach to obituaries and other life stories is built on providing unique value that I believe people would pay significantly for. I think […]
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[…] A possible new business model for obituaries […]
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[…] I doubt that death notices are a significant revenue stream for any newspaper. I believe the approach for obituaries that I proposed in 2010, with death notices free but with an option for families to commission […]
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[…] A possible new business model for obituaries […]
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[…] A possible new business model for obituaries […]
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[…] Offer commissioned life stories instead of formulaic obituaries. […]
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[…] suggested that we rethink the business model for obituaries, selling commissioned life stories written by professional journalists. Deaths in the United States […]
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[…] When I was in France last month for the New Media in Russia conference, Oksana Silantieva interviewed me about the Complete Community Connection. I told her the concept for a new business model for news remains valid, but the details would need to be updated since I first proposed it four years ago. We also discussed my suggestion for a new business model for obituaries. […]
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[…] A few words about obits: We like them. My grandmother, who died in her eighties, once told me she had taken the Ex for more than 40 years because, among other things, “it has the best obituaries.” Most obits by necessity are somewhat stylized. However, every once in a while there comes an obit which can be a good feature story … a colorful adventurer, perhaps; a once-celebrated actress who died in obscurity. When you see an opportunity in an obit, point it out to the desk. We can give it a ride. I’ve said before that we need to tell better life stories in our obituaries. […]
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[…] I thought Patch had the potential to develop and succeed at moving beyond advertising into more meaningful revenue sources. I thought its national scale and digital roots gave it potential to develop some of the revenue sources I have encouraged news organizations to explore, such as databases, local search, direct sales and commissioned obituaries and other life stories. […]
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Advertising should never accompany a obituary….ever.
Legacy.com have a terrible reputation from customers and the general business world for gauging people when they are emotionally vulnerable.
There is a new site launching in 3 weeks that doesn’t contain any advertising whatsoever ,is user friendly and most of all respectful
The Memorial Post.
There is currently Vimeo 4 minute explanation of why the memorial post was created, which is because of Legacys terrible reign and control over the worlds newspapers.
Thank you for reading.
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[…] Offer grieving families (and people planning their own funerals) the opportunity to hire experienced journalists to write (and shoot) text and/or video obituaries whose quality will justify profitable fees. […]
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[…] and by contributing ideas for making more money. For instance, I think ideas like my suggestion of commissioned obituaries (which hasn’t caught on anywhere yet, but I am certain it can work) are more likely to come […]
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[…] I added to it later in 2009 with my suggestion for mobile-first strategy, in 2010 with my call commissioned obituaries and other life stories and in 2011 with a long list of revenue ideas for newspaper […]
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[…] I’ve noted before, news organizations should consider offering the service of professionally written stories about people’s lives, rather than formulaic obituaries provided by funeral homes. A good supplement to that service (or […]
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[…] to adopt N2, C3 or mobile-first in a meaningful way (or even to try a narrower proposal I made to build a new business around telling people’s life stories, rather than just charging people for ob…). If anyone, especially me, thinks I had some great ideas for reinvention of the news business, I […]
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[…] several years ago that news organizations or even freelance journalists should consider writing commissioned obituaries as a new form of business. In fact, I suggested that the business should tell stories of the […]
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[…] A possible new business model for obituaries […]
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[…] advertising). Maybe none of those strategies would have worked either. And maybe my proposed business model for obituaries wouldn’t have worked, and neither would any of the other revenue ideas that I and […]
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