Writing Obituaries That Actually Matter in Cleveland
I spent years reading the obituary section of the Plain Dealer and watching how families approached it. Some got it right immediately. Others came back three times because the piece didn't feel like their person. The paper has been running Plain Dealer Obits Honoring Clevelands Legacy Through Lives Remembered for decades, and the ones that stick with people are usually the ones that resist the template trap. Here is how the process actually works when you sit down to submit an obituary through the Plain Dealer or cleveland.com. You go to their website and request a form, or you call the obits desk directly. They give you a guide that tells you what fields they need: full legal name, age, city of residence, date of death, surviving family, predeceased relatives, service details, and a short biographical sketch. Most people fill it out from that checklist and call it done. That is where things go wrong quickly. The biographical sketch is the only part that people take seriously enough to get right. The rest is standard data entry. But the sketch is where the obituary lives or dies as a piece of writing. I have seen families paste a resume-length career summary into that box. I have also seen them write two sentences and leave it at that. Neither approach works. The sketch should be three to five paragraphs max, covering where the person came from, what they cared about, and who they were outside of any job title they held.
One thing nobody tells you about the submission process: the deadline for same-day online publication is usually 2 PM Eastern, and print has a cutoff around noon for that evening edition. If you miss those windows, your piece sits in a queue. There is no penalty, but if you are trying to coordinate funeral service announcements, waiting two days can cause real confusion. I learned this the hard way when a family missed the print deadline and then had three different services listed across two separate days because the obit ran late and nobody noticed until it was too late. The workaround was simple once I knew it — always call the obits desk directly instead of relying on the online form to confirm receipt. The form submits fine. The confirmation email is automatic and unhelpful. A live person on the phone will tell you exactly when your piece runs. Family trees in obituaries are another area where mistakes multiply. The standard format lists survivors first, then predeceased relatives. The problem is that modern families are complicated. Blended households, estranged relationships, chosen family — the traditional survivor list was built for a different era. I once worked with a widow who wanted to honor her second husband while also acknowledging the first husband she had been married to for thirty-seven years. The form had no field for that nuance. We solved it by listing both in the narrative portion of the sketch rather than trying to force them into the survivor bullet points. The editors accepted it without pushing back. The cost structure is straightforward but varies. A standard Plain Dealer obituary with a photo runs in the range of $200 to $400 depending on length and whether it appears in print, online, or both. Adding a larger photo or pushing past a certain word count can add $50 to $150 to the bill. Memory articles — the longer, more essay-style tributes — start around $400 and go up from there based on space. If budget is tight, publishing online only is the practical choice. The digital obituary reaches the same audience within a few weeks anyway, since the Cleveland area is small enough that word spreads locally regardless of medium.
Photograph quality matters more than most people expect. I have seen family phones used to snap photos of printed pictures, which come back grainy and dark when the paper prints them. Always send a high-resolution scan or a direct digital photo. The obits desk will reject a pixelated image, and resubmitting after the deadline has passed is not a fun exercise. Send the photo with the original submission and label it clearly with the deceased person's full name. Editors see hundreds of submissions a week. Labeling prevents mix-ups. There is a common misconception that obituaries are strictly factual documents. They are not. An obituary is a memorial text with editorial constraints. You can include nicknames, favorite phrases, inside jokes that the family understands, and specific local references that ground the person in their community. I once read an obituary for a man who spent forty years working at a Steel Plant in Lakeview Cemetery's neighborhood. The family mentioned his habit of fixing neighbors' lawnmowers on Sunday mornings for free. That single detail meant more than any career achievement listed above it. It told you who he was. The editors liked it and ran it as written without editing it down. The limitation everyone needs to understand is that the Plain Dealer obits desk is staffed by general assignment editors, not specialist writers. They will correct spelling and basic grammar. They will not expand a two-sentence tribute into something substantial unless you provide the content. They are processing dozens of submissions per day during peak periods. Patience gets you better results than pressure.
Get the Full Details
If the Plain Dealer feels like too much friction, local alternative options exist. Cleveland Scene occasionally runs longer-form death notices. Neighborhood papers like the Cleveland Jewish News have their own dedicated obituary sections with different pricing and audience reach. And of course, families can publish directly on cleveland.com's community platforms now, which bypasses the traditional editorial gate entirely. Each route has tradeoffs in terms of reach, cost, and control over the final text. The bottom line is that writing an obituary for the Plain Dealer is a logistical exercise wrapped around an emotional one. Get the facts right, submit early, call to confirm, send a good photo, and write the sketch like you are telling someone about a person you loved rather than filling out a form. The rest follows.
