Two newspapers, two obit strategies
This past week I interviewed obituary writers in two different newspapers across the country, The Bradenton Herald in Bradenton, FL and the Greenville Sun in Greenville, TN. Both newspapers were mentioned in 2000-2001 by the Readership Institute as newspapers doing a good job providing obits to readers. I wanted to check what they are doing and how.
According to Danica Sherrill, a Bradenton Herald employee who spoke to me about their newspaper’s obits, the newspaper publishes between ten to twenty obits a day. The numbers always increase in the winter because all the “snow birds”, that is people who like to move to warmer locations during winter, come down to Bradenton and then some of them, of course, die.
The newspaper prints short obits of 50 words or less for free and runs longer stories about the deceased for a fee. But the most interesting thing about the Bradenton Herald is that the staff doesn’t write any of the obits, neither the free nor the longer, paid versions. The families write them all. “We don’t write them, we just publish them, “ Sherill told me.
The Greenville Sun does have staff writing their obituaries. They have a person who is not a reporter whose job is to write the basic death notices each day. Longer news stories about the deceased will be written by John Jones, the obit editor or by a staff reporter assigned to the task. All their obituaries are free.
The Greenville Sun caters to a small community of 66,000 people. As a result there are many families who have lived in the community for a long time and everyone knows everyone. As a result, Jones said, they often hold other stories for a day or two if an obituary needs to run.
“We feel that there is probably nothing short of a declaration of war that a more pressing general readership interest than the obituary section of a community newspaper,” Jones said.
My impression is that each newspaper handles obits in a way that befits their particular community. These two newspapers have two very different strategies, but strategies that clearly work.