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 now?
So I’ll turn that advice around and suggest that it could work for journalists who have retired, accepted buyouts, lost jobs staff cuts, or are still seeking to break into a shrinking news business.
I am quite sure that many grieving families want something more than the formulaic news article (I refuse to use the word “story”) that most newspapers publish if they still publish free obits at all. And most families don’t have a truly good writer available to craft the kind of paid obituary they want to remember their lost loved one. If they do have a good writer in the family, that person may be struggling with grief, traveling to attend the funeral or wanting to spend time with family.
I can write, but when my nephew Patrick died last year, his parents asked me to deliver a eulogy and that took all the time I had between picking people up at the airport and other family time. His obituary was OK, but didn’t capture Patrick’s personality or his struggle with leukemia the way an artful professional writer could have with more time and less emotion.
I think many families would gladly commission, at a reasonable fee, a professional to write a real life story, which is what an obituary should be.
The business model for a writer would be to offer services through funeral homes, which already are dealing with the families and handling lots of large expenses. A writer doing this as a business could be the primary writer, with a few freelancers available to handle overflow.
As I described before, you could offer a tiered approach: a two-source obit that takes half a day at one cost; a full-day obit with more sources at a mid-range price; an epic-story that takes the two or three days between death and the funeral. The epic package would include a shorter obit the first day for the local newspaper, a quickly printed booklet or tabloid for the funeral and a lasting online version on your memorial website.
(You’d want a better brand name than epic story, but I can’t do the full business plan here; I’m a blogger kicking these half-baked ideas out on my daily commute. And, of course, you would need a pricing plan that was reasonable for families but would provide a good income for the writer.)
Considering how many funeral homes offer prepaid services, you could make this part of the package: Buy the funeral services while you’re still alive and commission the story yourself, rather than leaving that detail for loved ones to address in their grief. The writer gets to interview the subject of the story. This package could include a biography (or ghost-written autobiography) written while the subject is still alive and published in print or as an ebook, with a prepaid fee for updating and publishing an obituary-length version after death.
The touchy part of this whole topic is profiting from people’s grief. That’s what I faulted LancasterOnline for in my Monday post on their plan to charge for reading online obituaries, and at least one commenter on my Wednesday post turned that same issue back on me, suggesting that obits and business model don’t belong in the same sentence. But if you focus on selling the obituary/biography service to the living, then you have a business model based on ego. Who can’t get behind that?
And speaking of business models, I think obituaries are just one of many areas where entrepreneurial journalists can develop healthy businesses taking a different approach to life’s storytelling opportunities. These certainly will present some ethical challenges. You won’t have the independence from news sources that most journalists cherish and protect. But you can insist on accuracy and you can encourage dealing honestly with ups and downs of life. Journalists for hire will need to develop appropriate ethical guidelines and be transparent about them. But ghost writers have been dealing with these issues for years.
As I noted in Wednesday’s post, a journalist with video skills could do the same thing with video obituaries, either as part of the writing business I just described or as a separate standalone business. And this business could do more than obituaries: wedding anniversaries, graduations, retirements, awards, honorary degrees.
This won’t be the right second career for every displaced journalist, but obituaries that have been freed from newspaper formulas are great storytelling opportunities, and many journalists got into this business because they love telling stories.
More to come: Wednesday’s post mentioned Kay Powell, the masterful retired obit writer for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. I sent Kay a link to the post and we’ve had a nice email exchange since then. I’ll be profiling her shortly, perhaps this weekend. Then I think I’ll stop writing about obits for a while. Unless I hear from Jim Sheeler.
Thanks for the post, Steve. Today, I am Web editor at my company but before then I was a reporter. One thing people would get a kick from was that I actually got a great deal of satisfaction from writing obituaries, sitting down and talking to families and pulling from them a bit of what was special about someone so familiar they might lose clarity on how special they were.
When my father died in 2008, the paper in my hometown didn’t think his death was worth a news obit. But of course in my family it was the biggest news of our year.
Though I’d worked for a newspaper for several years, I admit I didn’t know how much it cost to run an obit. Having traveled halfway across the country unexpectedly, I didn’t have at my fingers the amount of cash I needed to run the obituary as long as I liked and was horrified by the amount I did pay for what I got. I still have a bad taste in my mouth over that experience.
But I was glad that at least I was able to write my father’s obituary. I’m glad that I had a talent that gave honor to him and wondered then and since what his obituary would have been had I not had those talents. I thought then that freelancing obits would do great honor to those who’ve died and their families.
It’s a good idea you describe above and it – if priced honorably – can be a great help to people and be a help when folks lack the talents they need in a crisis.
As a side note, the link to my pop’s obituary follows. It’s hosted by his high school’s alumni association because Legacy.com wanted more money to host it for more than one year.
http://www.uhs1964.com/html/henry_r__lopez.html
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Thanks, Henry. Lovely tribute to your father. I especially liked the “We’ve Only Just Begun” detail, the kind of thing that never makes those formulaic obits. I’m sure he was proud of you. I wish I could have written my father’s obituary.
I’ll bet grieving families would be much more willing to pay for a writer’s time and skill than they are for a few inches of newspaper space. As a longtime editor, I know that space has value that most people probably don’t recognize. But I also know that paid obits are a profit center that subsidizes other parts of the operation.
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Two important points and a question here: First point: Every reporter (just like every other employee) should go check what his/her paper charges for obits. It’s part of understanding the business model. I find some of the charges offensive, and others also might, but knowing those charges provides a basis in fact for suggesting that there may be other revenue sources that are less odious to readers. Everyone’s gotta care where their paycheck comes from.
Second point: I completely agree with the above. The husband of a close friend died a couple of years ago. I don’t live nearby so couldn’t help in any of the ways that others could — driving, bringing food, picking up stuff — but they did ask me to write the obit. It was a humbling task, I was honored to be asked, and ultimately I felt as though I had done something really valuable for my friend and her family. They treasure that obit, not because I’m so wonderful but because by having someone write it to whom it mattered, it did a much better job than a formulaic one of capturing the essence of who Bruce was. (It did, however, have to be entirely paid for, so it was briefer than the family would have liked.)
I think someone who didn’t know Bruce but who spent time with the family gathering reminiscences of him could have done as well as or better than I did, so I absolutely see an unmet job to be done here.
Now the question: How best to market this service without being intrusive or offensive?
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Hi Elaine,
I’d actually be willing to take this to my admin and see if we can make this happen as a service. The funeral homes are very good at making these sales and papers often have long-standing relationships.
I don’t think this would work for staff writers, necessarily. But having a stable of freelancers on call might be a way to go.
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Thanks for those insights, Elaine. Henry, if you guys give this a try, please let me know how it goes. I’m not asking for a commission, just a blog post.
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Steve,
I’m so glad you touched on this topic as I recently dealt with this in my small, hometown of Bowling Green, Fla. My grandfather passed away in June. Of course, I am the journalist in the family, and I knew that I wanted to write his obituary for the newspaper.
However, the newspaper charges by the word and to add a photo, it’s $15. The funeral home that we worked with writes the obits and pays for it to go in the newspaper. My family’s thought was why pay the newspaper, when the funeral home pays for everything. Well, I didn’t exactly feel that way because I knew by having the funeral do it; they will only write a standard obit, and I would have paid to do it myself.
I was really close to my grandfather, and I grieved just like everyone else, but I really wanted to write his obituary because I believe everyone deserves a compelling obit with lots of color and emotion.
When the obit came out in the newspaper, it was horrible, and I wasn’t happy with it. There were errors as they misspelled my mother’s name, and it included an extra family member who didn’t exist. In addition, it didn’t reflect the life that my grandfather lived. He was a World War II Veteran and a fisherman who had lots of stories to tell in his 90 years.
It would make so much sense to have more people like Kay Powell in the newsroom to actually take the time to interview families and write compelling obituaries that families don’t mind looking at when they are missing their loved one. There are so many journalists who could do this job and newspapers prefer to do the standard? I agree with the tiered approach. Why not? It’s about time someone spoke up about this, and I’m certainly glad you did.
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I am interested in starting an Obituary Business. I would interview the families. I would find out what makes that person unique. It is a delicate subject, but would have to be done, with the upmost respect. I will do my research and post it when I find out! Thank you!
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