How to Navigate Quad City Times Obituaries
Filing an obituary through the Quad City Times is not the same process as posting something on social media or drafting a press release. The paper operates under strict editorial guidelines, and there are concrete steps you need to follow to make sure the notice runs correctly and on time. I spent years handling these submissions for funeral homes and family offices across the Illinois and Iowa sides of the river, and the friction points are always the same. Most mistakes happen because people don't understand the deadline cutoffs, the word count limits, or the difference between a standard obituary and an advertising-led memorial. The Quad City Times publishes its daily obituary section through a combination of staff-written notices and paid submissions from families and funeral homes. Staff writers cover high-profile deaths locally. The rest run as paid content, which means the family or their chosen funeral director is responsible for getting the details right before the submission window closes. The current deadline for same-day publication is typically 10:00 AM Central Time on the day you want it to appear, though this varies slightly depending on whether the edition is the standard print run or a weekend supplement. Miss that window by even fifteen minutes and your notice gets pushed to the next available publication date. There is no expedited fee that overrides this. It is simply a hard cutoff. To submit, you go through the Mortuary Collaboration group, which is the platform the Times uses to receive obituary notices from funeral homes. If you are a member of the public filing on your own without a funeral home, you can still submit directly through the Quad City Times website under their obituary submission portal. You will need to provide the full name of the deceased, date of death, age, a brief biographical sketch, surviving family members, service information, and where memorials can be directed. The online form has required fields marked with asterisks, and several of them are traps for people who try to rush through. The "date of birth" and "date of death" fields, for example, require the exact ISO format (YYYY-MM-DD), not the way most people write dates in casual conversation. Get the format wrong and the system rejects the submission silently. You do not get an error message explaining why. You just get bounced back to the top of the form with no indication of what went wrong.
I learned this the hard way when a family in Davenport needed an obituary published for a father who passed on a Saturday afternoon. We had all the details ready. We submitted through the portal at around 9:30 AM and received the confirmation email. Then at 11:00 AM, we got a call from the mortuary saying it had been pulled. We logged back in and discovered the form had rejected two date fields because they were entered as "06/12/1948" instead of "1948-06-12." The initial success email was misleading. The submission hadn't actually gone through. We resubmitted around 11:15 AM, and because it was a Saturday with lower volume, it made the Sunday edition instead. The family lost the Monday appearance they had counted on. This is exactly why you should enter dates in the ISO format from the start and double-check the confirmation screen before closing the browser tab. The word count for a standard obituary in the Quad City Times runs about 200 to 300 words for the free basic listing, which includes the death announcement and minimal biographical detail. If you want a longer memorial with a full life story, photos, and extended survivor lists, you are looking at paid advertising rates. The newspaper charges by the line or by the word block, and the price scales up quickly once you go past the basic length. A typical full obituary with a portrait photo and a two-column layout can cost between $200 and $500 depending on the length and whether you include a sidebar graphic. These numbers are approximate and shift with annual rate adjustments, so you should confirm current pricing directly with the Times classifieds department before you draft the final text. One thing most people do not realize is that the obituary and the condolence book are separate systems. The Times runs an online guestbook where readers can leave messages beneath each notice. This is useful for families who want a centralized place to collect memories, but it is not automatic. You have to request that the guestbook be linked to the published notice, and the link only activates after the obituary goes live. If you are trying to collect tributes in real time while the notice is still pending, that will not work. The guestbook simply does not exist until the article has an assigned URL and is publicly visible.
Photos are another area where people run into problems. The Times accepts JPG and PNG files up to a maximum file size, but they also require a minimum resolution for print quality. A decent portrait for print needs to be at least 300 DPI at the dimensions you want it printed. Most phone camera photos are fine if they are sharp and well-lit. The problem is when people use scanned documents, like an old black-and-white diploma or a faded group photo from a wedding. Those do not reproduce well in the obituary section and usually get either rejected by the editor or printed so poorly that the subject is unrecognizable. Stick to clear, modern photographs unless the family specifically requests a historical image, and in that case, provide the highest-quality scan you can find. I once had to advise a family to pull a photo from an archived digital album on a relative's cloud storage because the one they sent was a heavily compressed screenshot from a Facebook post. The compression artifacts made it unusable for print. If you are compiling an obituary for someone who served in the military, the Times will honor that detail, but they do not automatically flag service records. You need to explicitly state the branch, rank, years of service, and any notable deployments or honors. Vague phrasing like "he served his country" is not enough for the editor to include military details, and without those specifics, the notice will likely omit the service information entirely. On the flip side, mentioning something incorrect about military service can create a genuine awkward situation. One family I worked with listed a veteran as having served in the Army when he was actually Marines. The obituary went to print with the error, and the family had to issue a correction in the next day's paper. Corrections carry a separate fee and look sloppy, so verify every factual claim against primary documents before you submit. The obituary section does publish daily, but there are occasional gaps during major news events or holiday editions when the newspaper allocates space to other coverage. If you are watching the clock and your notice has not appeared by early afternoon, check the archive page rather than assuming it was dropped. Sometimes notices run in a digital-only slot and do not appear in the print edition that day. The online version is the primary location now anyway, and the Times does not always list every single paid notice in the physical newspaper's obituary column.
Get the Full Details
For people who want to search for recent obituaries, the Quad City Times website maintains a searchable archive where you can filter by date, last name, or location. The search function is functional but not particularly refined. Typing a full name usually works. Typing a partial name or a nickname often returns a mixed bag of results. The site does not currently offer an email alert feature for new obituaries matching a specific name, so if you are tracking multiple people or doing genealogical research, your best bet is to check the page manually on a daily basis or set up a browser bookmark and refresh it each morning. There is a practical workaround for people who need faster turnaround or more control over the final text. Some local funeral homes in the Quad Cities area have relationships with the Times that allow them to submit notices through a direct editorial channel rather than the public portal. This is not a shortcut that bypasses the deadline. It simply means the funeral home's account goes through a different queue and tends to have fewer formatting rejections. If you are working with a funeral director, ask them whether they submit through Mortuary Collaboration or through a direct editor contact. The difference is real and it matters when you are on a tight schedule. Another limitation worth noting is that the Times does not publish obituaries for people who died outside the Quad Cities region unless there is a clear local connection. A death in Chicago or Des Moines will not run in this paper just because the family lives nearby. The editor will typically ask for evidence of residence, a local funeral home handling arrangements, or a service being held at a Quad Cities venue. If you are unsure whether your notice qualifies, call the classifieds desk before you invest time in drafting it. The staff is generally straightforward about whether a submission fits their geographic scope.
The bottom line is that the Quad City Times obituary process is manageable if you treat it like a formal submission rather than a casual online form. Get the dates in the right format. Verify every fact against a source document. Plan for the cost if you want a longer notice. And do not assume that hitting submit is the same thing as confirming publication. The confirmation email is not a guarantee. It is just a receipt that the system accepted the data. The editor still reviews the content before it goes to print, and that review step is where most rejections actually happen.
