Steve, Your explanation of obituary submissions brings to mind an incident that occurred in Ogden, UT at the Ogden Standard Examiner. The Examiner used to allow anyone to submit obituaries until a local man opened the paper and read his own obituary! Obviously someone was sending him a message, albeit a dire one! After that incident the newspaper changed their policy and would only accept obituaries from funeral homes. Lori Laird -----Original Message----- From: Steven Coker <[email protected]> To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Date: Monday, June 28, 1999 7:48 AM Subject: Obituaries >[email protected] wrote: >> I believe obits, like everything else that has been written, are copyrighted. >> They were written by someone--either a member of the family, or most often, >> the newspaper.... > > >I've written two newspaper obituaries for close relatives. My understanding, >based on experience, about the way obituaries are done these days is something >like this. The Funeral Home requests information from the family or other >survivors regarding the deceased. The Funeral Home then, with that information, >writes an obituary using a standard format used by that Funeral Home. The >Funeral Home asks the family to approve the obituary. The Funeral Home then >submits the obituary to the newspaper for publication. > >However, I believe that the family or anyone else could prepare the obituary and >submit it directly to the newspaper for publication. But, I think that most >obituaries are submitted through the Funeral Home. I believe that newspapers >generally don't write obituaries these days. Rather, I think that they merely >report death information submitted by others. So, the Funeral Home would >probably know better than the newspaper who actually prepared any given >obituary. > >Steve Coker >http://scroots.org/ >