Submitting Obituaries Through the Press Connects Platform
The Press Connects obituary system is Gannett's internal platform that routes death notices and full obituaries through hundreds of local newspaper websites. If you are a funeral director or a family member trying to place an obituary through one of these papers, you will eventually hit this system. It is not the friendliest interface. You do not need to be a technologist to figure it out, but you do need to know a few things before you start. This is essentially the workflow funnel: you submit the notice through the newspaper's website or a third-party obituary vendor like DeathMemory or Storyful, it gets routed to the Press Connects editorial system, a proofreader at the paper reviews it, and then it publishes on the site and sometimes in print. The turnaround time depends entirely on whether the paper has a dedicated obituary desk and how far along the current day's edition is. Most major markets turn around same-day submissions made before 11 a.m. smaller papers? Maybe two days, maybe three if they are short-staffed. Here is the practical side. You go to the local newspaper's website, find the obituary section, and click "Submit an Obituary." You will be redirected to a form — usually powered by a vendor backend that pushes data into Press Connects. You fill in the biographical details, upload any photos, select your length tier, pick your publication dates, and pay. That is the basic path. The complications start after that.
Photo requirements matter more than most people realize. Most papers want a high-resolution JPEG, at least 1200 pixels on the longest side, and under 5 MB. If you upload something compressed from WhatsApp or iMessage, it will either get rejected or look muddy when rendered on their page. Scan a physical photo at 600 DPI if you have to. Do not crop the original frame unless you need to remove a background element that has nothing to do with the person. Readers notice when a photo looks cropped awkwardly around the shoulders. I ran into a specific problem last year that took me about forty-five minutes to resolve. A family submitted an obituary through the platform for a veteran, and included a military service photo alongside a regular headshot. The system's image validation accepted both files, but the editorial preview showed them overlaid incorrectly — one on top of the other, slightly misaligned, because the template was built for a single image. The paper's obituary editor had to manually adjust the layout, which delayed publication by a day. What I learned from that: when submitting multiple photos, always include a brief note in the special instructions field specifying the order and layout you want. That way the editor sees it before they open the layout tool instead of discovering the problem during proofreading. It is a small thing, but it prevents the delay entirely. The billing side is another area where people get tripped up. Press Connects obituaries are typically priced by line count or word count, not by a flat fee. A standard death notice might run $75 to $150 depending on the market. A full obituary with a longer biography can easily run $200 to $400, sometimes more in major metros. Some papers charge extra for photos — one photo might be included, each additional photo adds $25 to $50. Always confirm the total before you submit. The online calculator does not always reflect the exact pricing of the specific paper you are targeting, especially if it is a smaller affiliate in the Press Connects network.
Another thing nobody tells you about the edit approval process: once you submit, you usually get a proof back within a few hours. This proof is not just a spelling check. The editor may rephrase sentences, trim overly long paragraphs, or remove details they consider inappropriate for the space. You will get an email or a portal notification asking you to approve the final version. Do not skip reading the edited version carefully. Editors sometimes change "survived by" lists, adjust dates, or modify phrasing in ways that alter the meaning. I have seen a submission where "predeceased by" got flipped to "survived by" during editing, which completely reversed the family dynamic described in the piece. Catching that required actually reading the proof instead of just clicking approve. If you are submitting on behalf of a family, make sure you have their direct contact information so they can reach you if something in the proof looks wrong. The newspaper will not contact the family directly in many cases — they contact the submitter. You are the middle layer, and that means you need to be the one catching errors before publication goes live. Timing is critical. If you need the obituary published on a specific day, account for the submission cutoff. Most papers accept obituary submissions through the evening prior, but the earlier you submit, the more control you have over the placement. Late submissions often get pushed to the next available slot, which could mean losing the front-page obituary section or getting buried on a later page. For print editions, the cutoff is usually much earlier — often 2 p.m. or earlier for same-day print. Digital-only publications have more flexibility, but even they have editorial review queues that take time.
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There are also some technical quirks worth knowing. The Press Connects backend occasionally has session timeouts during the submission process, especially when uploading larger photo files. If your form freezes or kicks you back to the start, do not panic and do not resubmit immediately — that can create duplicate entries in the system. Wait five minutes, then check your email or the portal for a confirmation. If you do not see one, call the paper's obituary desk directly and give them the name and date of death. They can pull up your submission from their end. The system is not perfect. It does not always send confirmation emails, the payment processing can fail silently, and the preview tools are sometimes less accurate than the final rendered page. I have seen cases where the online version looked different from what the submitter approved because of template rendering differences. This is why having a screenshot of your approved proof is useful — it gives you a record if something publishes incorrectly. For funeral homes doing this regularly, the biggest time-saver is creating a standard template in a word processor before you even open the submission form. Fill in the common fields — full legal name, date of death, age, city of residence, surviving family members, service details — and keep it updated as new information comes in. When a submission comes through, you are pasting and adjusting rather than typing from scratch. This cuts the average submission time from about twenty minutes down to five or six, and it reduces the chance of typos in names and dates, which are the most common errors that require post-publication corrections.
If a paper's Press Connects-obituary workflow is broken or unresponsive, some funeral homes fall back on submitting directly via email to the obituary editor. This bypasses the online form entirely but removes the automated tracking and confirmation. It is a workaround, not a best practice, but it works when the system is down. Keep the editor's direct email address on file if you handle multiple markets.
