How I Handle Obituary Submissions For The DeKalb Daily Chronicle
I started submitting obituaries to the DeKalb Daily Chronicle about six years ago after my uncle passed and I had to figure out the whole process myself. It was more frustrating than I expected. The newspaper has specific formatting rules and word limits that aren't always easy to find on their website. After going through this enough times, I learned the workflow pretty well and wanted to share what actually works. The first thing you need is the contact information for the obituary desk. The DeKalb Daily Chronicle handles obituaries through their main editorial line at (815) 742-1144. You can also email them at obits@dekalbdailychronicle.com. They prefer you submit within 24 to 48 hours of the death, but they will accept submissions up to a week later if there is a good reason. I learned that the hard way when I missed the window for one submission and had to call multiple times to get it accepted.
Remembering Lives Honored In The Dekalb Daily Chronicle Obituary A Compassionate Look At Community Stories
The obituary itself should be between 200 and 500 words. Anything shorter reads like a skeleton and anything longer gets edited down, often losing details that matter to the family. I recommend writing your draft to around 400 words and then trimming from there rather than starting long and losing content. The standard price for an obituary in the DeKalb Daily Chronicle runs about $150 to $250 depending on length and whether you include a photo. Photo inserts can add another $30 to $50. Payment is handled when you submit, usually by credit card over the phone or via email arrangement. Here is the actual process I follow now. I write the obituary first in a Word document so I can edit it comfortably. Then I call the newspaper to confirm the current pricing and submission deadline for that day's edition. After that, I email the draft along with a high-resolution headshot or family photo. The staff reviews it for compliance with their style guide, which typically means full legal names, city of residence, and the name of the funeral home handling arrangements. They sometimes call back with suggested edits, which I usually accept because they know their formatting constraints better than anyone. One common problem I ran into repeatedly is photo quality. Early on I sent low-resolution images taken with older phone cameras and they came out blurry in print. Now I only submit photos that are at least 300 DPI and no smaller than 1500 by 1500 pixels. I keep a folder of well-lit, reasonably recent photos for each family member so this is never a last-minute scramble. This alone cut my submission errors in half.
Another issue is the timeline. The DeKalb Daily Chronicle runs obituaries in the morning edition, which means submissions typically need to be received by 3 PM the business day before publication. If you miss that cutoff, the piece goes to the next available issue. I keep a running calendar note of when each obituary was submitted and when it appeared so I can track accuracy and adjust my timing if something looks off. Sometimes there are delays during holiday weeks when the paper runs shorter editions, so I plan around those periods whenever possible. The article content matters a lot too. Families often want to include every detail about the deceased, but dense biographical paragraphs tend to lose readers. I structure obituaries with the essential facts upfront: full name, age, city, date of death, and surviving family members. Then I add personality in a separate section covering hobbies, career highlights, volunteer work, and personal quirks. This format consistently gets better feedback from readers who write in to share their own memories of the person being honored. I also noticed that including the service details at the end is standard practice but should be kept brief. The funeral home name, visitation time, and burial location are sufficient. I used to write long directions to cemeteries and church locations, but the paper editors routinely cut those down anyway, so I stopped including them to begin with. That saves everyone time.
Get the Full Details
There is one edge case that catches people off guard. If the deceased died unexpectedly or under suspicious circumstances, the newspaper will not publish certain details and may ask you to reword parts of the obituary. I encountered this when a neighbor's father passed in a car accident and the initial draft mentioned the cause of death. The obituary desk called me within two hours asking me to remove that line. It felt uncomfortable at the time, but I understand now why they make that request. They are protecting families from having to relive traumatic details in print. Another thing most people do not realize is that the DeKalb Daily Chronicle sometimes runs companion pieces called tributes or memorial columns that are different from the standard obituary. These can be longer and more narrative in tone. They cost more, usually around $300 to $400, and require separate submission. I have used this option a couple of times for elderly community members who lived particularly full lives, and the response from readers has been overwhelmingly positive. If you are considering this route, ask the obituary desk directly whether a tribute piece is available, because they do not always advertise it prominently. The whole process from writing to publication normally takes about three to five business days if everything goes smoothly. I have seen it take as little as one day when the submission comes in early and the draft is solid. The reverse is also true. During my experience, the longest any obituary took to appear was eight days due to a combination of a holiday weekend and a staffing shortage at the newspaper. There is nothing you can really do about that except submit as early as possible and confirm the expected publication date when you hand in your materials.
If you want a copy of the obituary after it publishes, the DeKalb Daily Chronicle does not automatically send a proof copy to families. You have to request one. I always ask for a digital proof via email before the piece runs, which they will provide within a few hours if you ask. Reviewing that proof is where most errors get caught, like misspelled names or incorrect dates. I never skip this step. The few times I did submit without requesting a proof, I found mistakes in the published version that I could not get corrected until the next issue. The most reliable way to stay current on any changes to their obituary process is to check the DeKalb Daily Chronicle website directly or call the office during business hours. Policies shift occasionally, especially around pricing and submission windows, and third-party websites often have outdated information. I rely on direct contact rather than guessing based on what I read somewhere else. It is slower than trusting a cached page, but it keeps my submissions clean and avoids unnecessary back-and-forth with the editorial staff. I have found that the best obituaries in the DeKalb Daily Chronicle share a common trait: they sound like a real person wrote them about someone they knew. The ones that feel stiff or overly formal get less engagement from the community. Including a specific story or anecdote about the deceased, even a small one, makes the piece stand out in a way that a resume-style biography never will. I try to ask family members for one memorable moment when I am helping them prepare the submission. That single detail usually becomes the emotional anchor of the entire obituary and makes it worth reading.
There is no perfect system for this and no shortcut that eliminates all the steps. But once you understand the workflow, the pricing, the timing, and the common pitfalls, it becomes manageable even during an already stressful time. I still remember the first obituary I submitted and how overwhelmed I felt. Now I handle it in about an hour from start to finish, and I rarely run into problems. That is the main goal here.
