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I have a relationship with obituaries.
As a young news clerk, one of my daily duties was to take a stack of faxes from local funeral homes and write the death notices. Occasionally, I would come across a name I knew.
Then there were the days when it was my turn to do the feature obituary. Each day, we would look through the death notices and find someone to write a longer feature story about. It could be someone notable, or often, it was someone who had lived an interesting life, contributed to their community and whose loss was felt by many.
One family sent flowers after my feature obituary was published. I don’t recall who I wrote about, but I remember the flowers. It felt good knowing my story honored their loved one, and it’s still the only thing I’ve ever received for something I wrote.
I was even tasked with writing my mom’s obituary a couple of years ago. That was not as easy as I thought it would be.
As I said, I have a relationship with obituaries.
Death notices and obituaries are a public service, and it’s what the local newspaper did, like stock prices or baseball scores. We knew through readership studies that obituaries were the first place many people looked (as they would often say: “To make sure my name wasn’t there”).
Adding Obituaries to Lookout Eugene-Springfield continues to fulfill our promise to this community. It’s a public service that we take seriously, and that’s why we are very happy to give it to you.
Obituaries has been the most asked-for feature since we started in April last year. We knew we would do it, but when we did, it needed to be better than what was otherwise available – that’s one of the standards Lookout holds itself to.
So we created a place where readers could see as comprehensive a list as possible of people in our community who have passed away — not just the ones willing to pay for a listing. We created a process that will include nearly everyone in Lane County who died, along with people who had ties to our area but might have moved away.
And that’s not a small, uncomplicated matter. Each year, on average, more than 4,000 people pass away in Lane County.
Charging people for this basic service was never up for discussion.
It’s what newspapers used to do. It’s what I believe newspapers are supposed to do. It’s what we are doing now.
We also built a place where families could memorialize their loved ones through paid obituaries. But, like everything we do, we wanted it to be easily accessible and make sense. No charging by word or line or, even more obscurely, “column inch.” Our obituaries are priced at $150 or $300. No additional or random fees for bolded words or publishing on a specific day.
You can learn more about our paid obituaries here.
We thought that would be a good new public service offering to this community, whose continuing outpouring of support for us is still remarkable. We decided we’d bring another great newspaper tradition: Selected feature obituary profiles written by our newsroom. The first one was Leo Heffron’s look at the life of Marie Jones.
You’ll find all that collected in one place every week, along with Lookout PM and, soon, our new free Saturday Wrap newsletter that will deliver news highlights and all our death notices and obituaries to your inbox. And you can do your part in sharing the news. Please share this link with friends and family and on social media, so they know what’s now available – and free – to all.
Every person has a unique story, and every person is important to their family, friends and their community. Writing that story is a privilege, and we look forward to sharing those stories with this community.
We want to hear what you think and let us know how we can improve our obituaries section. We’ll appreciate any comments. If there is someone you think should be featured in a story, you can let us know. Email obits@lookoutlocal.com.
Thank you for reading and supporting Lookout Eugene-Springfield.
