Same thing for my father. For many newspapers it seems to have become, basically, a
classified ad, unless it is a person of note to the larger audience.
Scott
On Sunday, January 17, 2010 8:55 AM MT, Sandra Quinn <sandra_quinn(a)windstream.net>
wrote:
Holly, I am not sure that is the case today here in Ohio. Most
funeral
homes do publish the family members written obituary at a cost of 200
dollars base fee charged by the newspaper. I wrote my grandmothers who
died in July of this year for her funeral home who published at that
rate charged by the local paper.
Sandy
Holly Timm wrote:
> Mark,
>
> As someone who once had the job of obituary writer at a newspaper, along
> with other writing tasks, generally the funeral home provides information
> obtained by them from the family of the deceased. The newspaper then writes
> the obituary using the information but usually neither the funeral home nor
> the family actually writes the obituary.
>
> Holly
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ohgen-bounces(a)rootsweb.com [mailto:ohgen-bounces@rootsweb.com] On
> Behalf Of Mark Lozer
> Sent: Saturday, January 16, 2010 12:05 PM
> To: ohgen(a)rootsweb.com
> Subject: [OHGENWEB] regarding posting obituaries
>
> Hi Maggie,
>
> Question, how does an obituary become the literary property of a
> newspaper? Obituaires are written and prepared by the family of the
> deceased as part of the funeral home package for which they are charged.
> The funeral home takes care of submitting the prepared obituary to all the
> newspaper the family request it to appear in and they are charged for each
> according to the rates of the various newpapers. I understand that if your
> source of the obituary is a specific newspaper that they should be given
> credit but do not understand why there should be an issue of the newspaper
> having to give permission to post a copy. These days many funeral homes
> also have websights and post obituaries there as well. Funeral homes also
> make up bookmarks and other items which they print the obituaries on It
> seems to me that with so many places obituaries are found these days that it
> would be hard for anyone entity to take any legal action for posting an
> obituary transcription. I would think if permission is needed, that it
> should come from the surviving family member(s) that prepared the obituary
> since they are the ones that composed and paid for its publishing, Many
> people write their own obituaries and I suppose in that case control of it's
> use would pass to the survivor as well. Now if your are talking about
> posting an actual scan of a specifc newspaper, I could understand that there
> may be a requirement to get permission from the newspaper to do that.
> Then also there may have been a time period in the past from the 1930's to
> present where an obituary was actually written by someone on the newspaper
> staff, but in todays world this is rarely the case with the exception of a
> special feature the you see where a newspaper publishes it's own special
> obituary of an prominent individual.
>
> Just some thoughts. I no legal expert but it just seems to me that we are
> giving newspapers to much control here. I get many requests directly from
> family members of the deseased to post obituaries and I think they should
> have every right to grant permission to do so without being concerned with
> whether it is ok with a newspaper or in many cases the several newspapers
> that carried the obituary.
>
>
>
> Mark Lozer
> 817 N. Fulton St.
> Wauseon, OH 43567
> lozer(a)fulton-net.com
>
>
> Fulton County Ohio GenWeb Page Coordinator
>
http://www.rootsweb.com/~ohfulton/