Free obits, R.I.P.

It has come to my attention that the members of my community have been very, very, very spoiled. For as long as I can recall -- and longer, I suppose, since my memory is often truncated and faulty -- the local newspapers for our town and its neighbors have published death notices free of charge, as... well, news.

Since the papers were all recently acquired by regional "media giant" Gatehouse Publications, though, that has changed a bit. They're following the practice of many big city papers, and billing the bereaved families (or whomever) for the placement of what amounts to a classified ad announcing the death while describing the life of a member of our community.

I can understand the motivation behind this sort of fiscal action. After all, the print media are dying, slowly, choked by their slowness and their unfortunate tendency toward incompletion and bias as applies to real news. Small papers, underfunded and therefore self-described as understaffed, find themselves without much motivation to go out and actually report local events, so they rely heavily upon press releases from local businesses and upon agencies in other cities with bigger budgets to provide them with headline materials.

This leads to a loss of interest in reading, on the part of many local citizens, which, in turn, leads to a drop in subscriptions, which leads to a drop in local advertising dollars, which leads to less local stuff going in.... the downward spiral continues.

Further, many of the next generation of potential readers of news are finding alternative resources, especially via the internet. That costs the paper even more of its future income.

And, with other advertising revenues flying out to so-called "new media" outlets, as well as subscription revenues dropping and cost of print and delivery skyrocketing, it sort of makes sense to charge for death notices. After all, it works in Chicago, New York, and such -- and consider how thick the papers would be if they printed a thorough report on the life of everybody who died inside their city limits on a given day. Charging by the column-inch makes sense, there. It keeps a little money coming in, and keeps po' folks from demanding equal time with high muck-a-mucks. Status quo is maintained at so very many levels.

But we are not Chicago. In a small community, where not much actually happens (other than the usual ho-hum police blotter stuff of speeding tickets and shoplifting arrests), deaths of any sort are news. Even if it's just old Uncle Edgar, who dropped off in his sleep at the nursing home, on the day after his 97th birthday, his passing is an event worthy of mention to a fair percentage of the community. The one thing everybody in this little town needs to know is, whose family needs support today?

Sometimes, the best way to boost readership and subscription numbers in a podunk-junction village paper is to allow for a few dollars to be given away elsewhere -- such as, to provide obits for free, to aid bereaved families.

If that can't be done, I'm pretty sure there are folks in alternate media who will be happy to oblige the community in, say, posting notices of that sort online, at no charge. And then where will the print guys be?