From elswinger:

With all the talk about the P-I folding—and who are we kidding, The Times will follow leaving USA Today and The New York Times—what will happen with obituaries? Sure, we will know when the famous die, but what will become of the remembrances of ordinary people? Sometimes this is the only to find out someone you know died. I found out my father died through an obituary because no one bothered to tell me.

14 replies on “Ordinary People”

  3. My prediction? It will go the way of phone listings. While you used to get the White Pages delivered free to your door with a comprehensive listing of every phone company customer in your area who didn’t specifically request an unlisted number, now you perform an internet search and get to a page where for $19.99 you can pay to see the listings for everybody in the world with that name, whether they wish to remain unlisted or not.

    So you’ll go to obit.com or whatever and when you type in a name, you’ll get a page that says “There are 11 dead people by that name. To find out if any of them are in fact your father, please click the PayPal icon on the right of your browser window.”

  5. For a second I thought you were talking about the New York Times, because there’s an article in Atlantic saying it might just do that by June.

    Anyway, no matter how provincial your sentiments may be, there is an unspoken edict among journalists the “The Times” can only refer to the Old Grey Lady.

  6. Pah. There’s only one newspaper that says “The Times” across the top, and it ain’t the Old Grey Lady or the Blethen rag.

    Obituaries are the true measure of a community and the people who live in it. Going to some crappy website isn’t the same.

  8. All I could find were pay sites that were really part of genealogy sites (family trees).

    I was shocked that the P-I & Times charge almost $100 an inch for an obituary (another $150 to add a picture). Maybe Craig’s list could do an obit, but, like the newspapers, they will need to be able to verify the death through the death certificate or the funeral home (otherwise we will read Dan Savage’s obituary every week.)

  12. Just about all newspapers contract with Legacy.com, anyway. Few (aside from the larger ones) even bother putting obits in print anymore, even the ones (just about all) that make you pay for them.

  14. I didn’t think people would be so dense to think I meant the New York Times rather than the Seattle Times, since the word Times was shortly proceeded by P-I. When I refer to the New York Times, I say New York Times (or the Los Angeles Times, or the London Times).

    #7 Don’t blame me. I tried to have a relationship with the S.O.B.

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