Getting a Detailed Obituary Into the Post Star for the Saranac Lakes Community
Submitting an obituary to the Post Star in the Saranac Lakes area is not a process you can rush without consequences. The newspaper covers a very tight-knit region of the Adirondacks, and their obituary desk expects specific things from families and funeral homes alike. I have handled enough of these submissions over the years to know where the process typically breaks down. The Post Star runs obituaries that tend to be longer and more detailed than what you will find in larger metropolitan papers. Families in this area generally want thorough coverage of a person life, including church affiliations, veteran status, surviving family members across multiple towns, and sometimes even a full list of grandchildren. The newspaper accommodates this, but there is a cost structure attached to length. Most families think they are getting a free obituary because the paper says "free" somewhere on their website, but that free tier is usually two to three paragraphs at most. Once you go beyond that, you are paying per line or per word, and the rates change depending on whether the piece includes a photograph. I submitted an obituary last winter for a man who had lived in the area for sixty years and was involved with three different volunteer organizations, two churches, and a decades-long career at a local mill. The initial draft I wrote was about six hundred words. The funeral home had prepared it, and they sent it through without checking the length first. The Post Star charged us for the full word count. I learned that you can work within tighter limits if you are willing to move some of the biographical detail into a separate community newspaper or a memorial Facebook post. That second piece costs nothing to publish online and carries the same factual weight. The obituary itself then drops to about two hundred and fifty words, which fits comfortably within the standard pricing tier. The deceased still gets full recognition across both outlets.
The submission process itself requires a few specific items that trip up first-time submitters. You need a high-resolution photograph or you do not get one. Not a screenshot from social media, not a blurry phone picture from a dinner table. The paper requires an actual digital photo file, ideally at least two hundred pixels wide. Most families pull this from a driver's license photo or a holiday card snapshot, and the editor will reject it. The funeral director on our end started saving every good photo a family brings in during the arrangement conference, and those archived images have saved us three times in the last year when the family could not locate a suitable one before the submission deadline. Deadlines are another area where things go wrong regularly. The Post Star runs obituaries in the morning edition and online, and the cutoff is typically around three o'clock for next-day placement. If you miss that window, your piece holds until the following publication cycle. During a particularly heavy week last spring, when three prominent local figures passed within four days, the paper ran a backlog situation and some obituaries did not appear until two days after the intended date. I called the office directly and they confirmed the delay was due to staffing and page space, not any issue with the submission itself. There is nothing you can do to force priority placement except to submit early and accept that the paper controls the schedule. Proofreading before submission matters more than most people realize. I once saw a biographical sketch list a surviving spouse who had passed away two years earlier because the funeral home copy-and-pasted the format from a previous obituary without updating the names. The family caught it, but the correction took an extra day and the piece ran late. Always verify every name, every date, and every location against official records before you send anything. Cross-reference the Social Security death index if you are unsure about a date, and confirm cemetery locations with the funeral home that handled the arrangements.
There is a practical limitation most families do not anticipate. The Post Star does not accept obituaries submitted through general contact forms on their website. You have to send the text and photograph to their designated obituary email address or fax, or route it through a funeral home that has an established relationship with the newsroom. If you are not working with a funeral director, call the office first and get the current submission email. It changes occasionally when staff shifts occur, and sending your material to the wrong address results in a delay of at least twenty-four hours while they redirect it. The newspaper also has a policy on what they will not publish. Political endorsements, advocacy language, and commercial promotions embedded in the obituary text will get the piece edited down or returned for revision. I have seen families include the name of a specific funeral home multiple times in the body of the obituary with phone numbers and service descriptions, and the editor trimmed all of that out. The funeral home recognition belongs in the acknowledgments section, not woven into the biographical narrative. Keep the focus on the person who died, not on the services provided. Costs for a standard detailed obituary in the Post Star typically run between two hundred and four hundred dollars depending on length and photo inclusion. Additional photos cost extra, and each one adds to the final bill. Families on a tight budget should plan the text carefully before submitting, because revisions after the piece runs incur additional charges. Draft the full version first, then trim it yourself rather than having the editor cut it for you. The result is always cleaner when you control the reduction.
Get the Full Details
For archives and reference, the Post Star keeps obituaries on their website indefinitely after publication, which means the detailed accounts of Saranac Lakes residents remain searchable years later. This is valuable for genealogy researchers and family historians who might otherwise lose track of information that only existed in print. The obituary itself becomes a primary source document for anyone researching local history in the Adirondack region.
