OBITUARIES FIND A RESTING PLACE ONLINE
Newspapers Won't Let Go of Dying

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by Wayne Robins

Mark Twain was at no loss for words when he read his own obituary on June 2,  1897. The great wit and former newspaperman took full advantage of the setup,  making the immortal observation: "The report of my death was an exaggeration."

But it's no exaggeration to say that a newspaper without obituaries might as  well do away with sports, advice columns, and letters to the editor: They're  fundamental. A contributor to a recent online discussion group wondered if any  newspapers were offering digital obit newsletters as a means of drawing either  paying subscribers or advertisers from the obvious selection of florists,  funeral homes, and estate lawyers.

"Where is the market for this kind of interactive media?" newspaper  consultant Peter Zollman asked rhetorically. "It's the diaspora of people who  used to live [in a town], have moved away, and ... want to know: Who was born,  who got married, who died?"

Some newspaper Web sites and other online outlets are finding that you can  make a living dealing with dying. The appeal seems especially strong for  suburban weeklies and small-city dailies.

The Bismarck (N.D.) Tribune's site has a searchable database of more than  9,000 obits dating back to 1996. Births and deaths for the current month are  accessible by the date they appeared in the print edition.

The obit link for the online edition of the Globe-Gazette of Mason City, Iowa, is listed  immediately after "News" on the home page and before "Sports," "Opinion,"  "Nation/ World," "Financial News," "Classified Ads," and other major subjects.

Specialized Web sites dedicated to obituaries are emerging and even forging  strategic alliances with newspaper companies.

A company with portal ambitions called 4Anything.com has a popular 4obituaries.com channel, with links to the obit  sites of about a dozen newspapers, from The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer to the Fairbanks (Alaska) Daily News-Miner. But  its emphasis is on famous people. "We receive significant traffic when someone  in the public eye passes away," said spokeswoman Sarah Starr.

Another portal site, HeavenlyDoor.com  provides information on everything from funeral homes to vault dealers. It has a  front-page link to a "Newspaper Obituaries" section, which on Wednesday had  links to the obit pages of 140 newspapers, many of them dailies.

The most ambitious online obit operation, however, may be Legacy.com, with investors such as Tribune  Ventures and CNI Ventures, investment units of the Chicago-based Tribune Co. and  Phoenix-based Central Newspapers Inc., respectively.

Legacy.com has a proprietary search engine called "ObitFinder" that links to  the obit pages of more than 1,000 newspapers. It also has partnerships with  about 1,500 funeral homes, according to Bill Paige, its director of  communications.

Legacy.com sees itself as a complement to newspaper death notices and  obituaries. A newsroom focusing entirely on obits, and longer, paid-for  "memorials," is part of the company, according to Paige, a former journalist  with United Press International.

Legacy.com hopes to become profitable by selling its "memorials," 1,000-word  life stories that can be augmented with photographs, eulogies, poems, and  tributes posted on the site in theoretical perpetuity. (The price for a  Legacy.com "memorial" is $145; newspapers or funeral homes selling "memorials"  receive some of the revenue.)

When funeral homes submit their death notices to local newspapers, they also  send notices to Legacy .com. (Its Web address is given in the newspaper death  notice.) Legacy.com posts a free death notice with a guest book so that friends  or relatives of the deceased can e-mail condolences.

In any case, online obituaries â€" whether from newspapers, aggregators, or  stand-alone sites â€" are likely to be a booming business as baby boomers age.  "The people who wrote their own wedding vows in the 1960s love to personalize  and take control," said Paige. "This is just another way to use technology to  facilitate a stage in life."

Wayne Robins (wrobins@editorandpublisher.com)  is an associate editor for Editor & Publisher magazine.