Working With the Richmond Times-Dispatch Obituary Process
The Richmond Times-Dispatch runs one of the larger obituary sections in Virginia, and if you have never placed one before, the whole thing can feel like it operates on its own mysterious logic. I have been submitting these for years now, through different newspapers actually, so I have a pretty good feel for where the friction points are. This is what it actually looks like when you go through it. You start by going to the Times-Dispatch website or calling their classifieds desk. They have an online form now, which saves you from trying to read handwriting during a stressful time. The form asks for the basics: full name, age, city of residence, date of death, and a brief biographical sketch. You also pick the length of the obit and whether you want a photo included. That photo question alone trips people up more than you would think. Here is the thing most people do not realize about these obituaries. The Times-Dispatch does not just publish whatever you send in. Their staff edits them. They will trim wordy passages, fix timeline inconsistencies, and occasionally call you back to clarify whether someone is a "beloved husband" or just a husband. This is not personal. It is standard procedure across most metropolitan dailies. I learned this the hard way when I once submitted an obituary that listed the deceased as having "retired after 40 years" and then went on to describe work they did for another twelve years after retirement. The editor called and asked me to straighten out the timeline. We did. The final version ran clean.
Let me walk through the practical side. You submit online at the Richmond Times-Dispatch site, or you can email or fax your draft to their classified department. They charge by the line or by the inch depending on how you count it, and photos run extra. Typical short obituaries land somewhere between two and four hundred dollars depending on length and whether you include a portrait image. It adds up fast if you are not careful about word count. The timing matters too. If you submit after business hours or on a weekend, your obituary might not run until the next available edition, which could be two or three days out. The paper publishes obits daily but they tend to batch certain days. I have seen dead people miss their ideal run date because someone submitted on a Friday evening and the next available slot was Tuesday. Not ideal when the funeral is Monday. One edge case that caught me off guard: the difference between an obituary and an death notice. People use these terms interchangeably but the Times-Dispatch treats them differently for pricing and content purposes. A death notice is basically a factual announcement with minimal biographical detail. An obituary is the fuller narrative version. If you send in what you think is a short obituary but it reads more like a death notice, they may quietly classify it as the latter and charge you accordingly. Or the reverse happens, where someone submits a full narrative but pays the death notice rate, and then the paper reclassifies it and bills the difference later. This happened to me once. I submitted what I thought was a straightforward obituary using their online template, but the editor flagged it because I had included a full life story and pastor names and church details, which pushed it into obituary territory pricing-wise. I ended up paying the higher rate but at least it ran the way I wanted. The workaround is simple: ask for a rate breakdown before you finalize, and explicitly state whether you want it run as an obituary or a death notice.
Another counter-intuitive point that nobody tells you: you do not always need to go through the newspaper itself. The Times-Dispatch now syndicates obituaries to several online memorial platforms and partner sites. What that means in practice is your submission can appear in print and on multiple websites simultaneously. This is useful but it also means your content is being distributed beyond the paper. If privacy is a concern for your family, you need to flag that upfront with the editorial desk. I have had families request that only the funeral home contact information appear rather than personal email addresses, and the paper will honor that if you ask before publication. Let me be straight about the downsides. The online submission system is functional but not great. It crashes sometimes, the photo upload feature is finicky with certain file formats, and you will occasionally get a confirmation email that turns out to be a glitch with no actual submission recorded. Always call to confirm after you submit online. A five-minute phone call can save you from finding out three days later that your obituary was never actually filed. The editing process itself is another area where expectations need management. You will not get full creative control. The paper has style guidelines and space constraints. If you want to include a long poem, a detailed mission statement from a charity, or a paragraph about a political campaign the deceased ran in, it probably will not fit. They will ask you to cut it. This is not censorship. It is logistics. The obituary pages have limited real estate and other families are waiting for their turn.
Get the Full Details
If the Times-Dispatch route does not fit your needs, there are alternatives. Legacy.com aggregates obituaries from many papers and lets you place one that ripples across their network. Some families prefer local funeral home websites, which give you more control over the content and length. Then there are free community boards and social media groups where people post memories informally. None of these carry the same weight or permanence as a major newspaper, but they can be appropriate depending on what the family wants. A smaller local paper in the surrounding counties might be more cost-effective if the deceased lived outside Richmond proper. The Richmond Times-Dispatch audience skews urban and broader regional, so if the person's life was centered in a smaller town like Chester or Hanover, a paper closer to that community might reach the right people more efficiently. I will say this much about the whole process. It is administrative work during a time when you have better things to focus on. The details matter, though. Get the dates right. Confirm the spelling of every surviving family member. Make sure the service location and time are accurate because those are the details people actually need. Everything else is secondary. The paper will handle the rest once you get the facts straight.
