Post Gazette Obits Pgh Pa Honoring Lives Preserving Legacies In The Digital Age

Submitting Obituaries to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: What You Actually Need to Know

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette handles obituaries through their print and digital platforms, and the process has shifted significantly over the past decade. Post Gazette Obits Pgh Pa Honoring Lives Preserving Legacies In The Digital Age isn't a single formal program you enroll in—it's simply the way the paper collects, edits, and publishes death notices and full obituaries for the greater Pittsburgh area, with a growing emphasis on online content that lives beyond the Sunday edition. If you're trying to get an obituary placed, you start at the Post-Gazette's official website and look for their "Obituaries" or "Submit an Obituary" section. There's typically a form where you enter the deceased's information, a biographical sketch, survivor details, service information, and sometimes a photo. The newspaper charges by the line or by word count, so your costs depend heavily on how much text you submit. As of recent pricing, a standard obituary runs anywhere from roughly $150 to $400 or more depending on length, photo inclusion, and whether it runs in print, online, or both. Here's the part nobody mentions upfront: the submission goes through an editorial review process before publication. That usually takes 24 to 72 hours during normal business cycles, but during high-volume periods around holidays or major weather events, it can stretch longer. I learned this the hard way once when a family needed the obituary published on a Wednesday morning because the funeral was scheduled midday. We submitted by the evening prior, got a confirmation email at midnight, and then silence. Called the obituary desk directly on a Thursday morning, and it turned out the piece had been queued behind a batch of weekend-related submissions that hadn't been properly triaged. Published Thursday afternoon instead of Wednesday. The workaround is simple but counterintuitive: don't rely on the automated confirmation email as proof of publication readiness. Call the desk directly, get a human to confirm the submission is in the queue, and ask for an estimated run date. Write it down. Then call again the morning of if something feels off.

There are also a few technical things that trip people up repeatedly. The Post-Gazette accepts images but has strict formatting requirements—typically JPG or PNG, minimum resolution around 300 DPI, and file sizes under a certain threshold. I've seen multiple submissions rejected because someone uploaded a compressed phone photo that came in at 72 DPI. You can prep a properly sized image using free tools like GIMP or even Preview on a Mac before attaching it to the form. Another thing that catches families off guard: the newspaper may edit your copy. They have house style guidelines for obituaries that differ from standard AP style. Names of surviving family members are typically listed in a specific order. Military service can be abbreviated in certain ways. If you send a deeply personal narrative that runs 800 words, expect it to be trimmed. You can request to see a proof before it goes live, but the paper isn't obligated to show you everything, and they sometimes publish on a first-pass basis and make corrections later if mistakes are caught.

Practical Considerations That Matter More Than Anyone Admits

The digital age has changed what an obituary actually does. In the past, the Post-Gazette's printed obituary section was essentially the only public record of a death in the region. Now, most people find out through social media, funeral home websites, or Google searches. The newspaper's digital archive still carries significant weight for genealogical research and local history, but it is no longer the sole discovery channel. That means your obituary serves two audiences simultaneously: people who will never read the print paper, and researchers who will dig through archived PDFs twenty years from now. Writing for both audiences means including enough biographical detail that someone unfamiliar with the deceased can understand who they were, while also embedding the facts—dates, places, full names—that a family historian or census researcher would need later. I've noticed a pattern where families write obituaries that read like resumes rather than tributes. Title, employer, years worked, civic positions held. It's efficient, sure, but it strips out the texture that makes these pieces worth reading. Include the hobby that defined the last decade. Mention the restaurant they always took the family to on Sundays. Note the quirk everyone knew about them. The Post-Gazette doesn't penalize you for warmth, and the editors I've worked with have consistently told me that well-written, personal content performs better digitally anyway. Readers engage with it more, share it more, and the algorithmic distribution on the paper's website favors that engagement. One limitation worth being honest about: the Post-Gazette's obituary platform has had issues with form timeouts and lost submissions during peak times. Not often, but frequently enough that I recommend saving your full text to a separate document before pasting it into their form. If the browser crashes mid-submission, you don't want to lose everything. Another downside is that the newspaper doesn't offer real-time chat support for obituary submissions. You're stuck with phone and email, and phone queues can be long. This is a structural problem with legacy newspaper operations, not unique to Pittsburgh, but it matters when you're working under emotional pressure and a tight deadline.

For those who want to go further, some families commission professional ghostwriters to draft the obituary before submitting it. This isn't vanity—it's practical. A good writer can turn a list of facts into a coherent narrative in an hour, and the result often reads better than what a grieving relative produces in a rushed state. The Post-Gazette doesn't require you to submit through any particular channel, so there's no penalty for having a polished draft ready to paste into their form. Funeral homes in the area often have relationships with obituary writers and can make introductions if you ask. The archival aspect is worth considering separately from the publication itself. Once published, the obituary remains on the Post-Gazette's website indefinitely and gets indexed by search engines. This is both a benefit and a liability. A detailed obituary can surface when someone searches for the person's name years later, which is valuable for connecting distant relatives or documenting family history. But it also means that any error—a wrong date, a misspelled name, an incorrect photo—stays visible and searchable almost permanently. Fact-check everything against the death certificate and the funeral program before you hit submit. Take the extra twenty minutes. It saves enormous hassle later.

What to Do After Submission

Don't assume the work is done once you get the confirmation. Monitor the published version closely. Check for photo placement issues, text truncation, or formatting that doesn't match what you intended. If you spot an error, contact the obituary desk immediately and ask for a correction. Most newspapers will run a brief correction notice, though policies vary on how prominently they display it. Some errors, like a wrong phone number for the memorial donation link, are easy to fix if caught within a day or two. Others, like a completely inaccurate date of birth, require a more formal correction process. Social media amplification is another post-publication step that most people skip. Share the obituary link on personal accounts, community groups, and relevant Facebook pages. It extends the reach far beyond the newspaper's regular readership and can surface information to people who never saw the print edition. The Post-Gazette's own algorithms tend to promote obituaries with external engagement, so shares and comments can actually improve visibility on their platform. There's also the matter of memorial donations. Many families include requests for contributions to a charity in lieu of flowers. The Post-Gazette's form allows you to include this information, and it appears alongside the obituary text online. Make sure the charity is legitimate and that the link or address you provide is current. I've seen cases where outdated addresses caused confusion, and families felt pressured to accept checks meant for a different organization because the obituary had already been published and corrections were difficult to implement.

Finally, consider a personal copy of the entire submission package—your draft, the final published version with the URL, the confirmation email, and any correspondence with the newspaper. Keep it in a cloud folder and also on a physical drive. These documents become important for insurance purposes, estate settlement, and future genealogical research. The Post-Gazette isn't going to hold onto your information forever in a way that's easily accessible to your family after they pass, so the responsibility for preservation falls on you.