Writing for the San Francisco Chronicle Obituaries Section
The obits page at the SF Chronicle runs daily and has been around since the 1800s. It's one of the more established newspaper obituary outlets in the country, which means it has strict editorial standards that aren't always obvious if you're submitting for the first time. Here's how it actually works. You submit through their website at sfchronicle.com/obituaries. There's a form, and they accept submissions from anyone, but acceptance isn't guaranteed. They publish both paid death notices and more substantial narrative obituaries that their own staff writers compose. The narrative pieces tend to go to people who've had some public profile or community impact in the Bay Area. Death notices are essentially paid ads written by the family — shorter, more biographical in a checklist kind of way. The submission form asks for the deceased's full name, date of birth, date of death, surviving family members, and a brief bio. They also ask whether you're requesting a paid notice or submitting for editorial consideration. That distinction matters a lot. If you want the longer treatment, you're asking their staff to write it, and they have limited space and a very specific editorial lens. I've seen decent submissions ignored because the person never held a public role and didn't meet their threshold for community impact. Not every death notice request becomes a story they're willing to publish for free.
For paid notices, the cost runs roughly $400 to $600 depending on length and placement. A standard centered notice with a photo and maybe a paragraph or two will set you back around $450. Longer or wider layouts climb from there. You need to have the life story details ready before you start because the form doesn't save drafts. I learned that the hard way — had to call my sister three times that morning to get birth dates and siblings' names correct. Wrong info causes delays and sometimes reprints, and nobody wants a correction notice running.
What Actually Gets Published
They tend to favor people connected to the Bay Area — whether by birth, career, or long-term residence. Military service, nonprofit work, teaching, union involvement, and artistic pursuits all register as meaningful. A generic "beloved mother and grandmother who loved gardening" usually won't get a narrative piece, but it works fine as a paid notice. The line between those two formats is blurrier than the website admits, but it's real. One thing most people don't realize: they run obits on a delay. If someone dies on a Monday, it might not appear until Wednesday or Thursday, depending on the volume of submissions that week. Holiday weekends are brutal for turnaround. During Memorial Day week last year, my friend's father's notice sat in queue for six days because the obits editor was clearing a backlog from the long weekend. There's no way to expedite it. You pay for placement, not timing.
Get the Full Details
Practical Pitfalls
Photo submissions are the biggest friction point. They accept JPEGs and PNGs but reject most images people send — usually because the file is too large or the resolution is too low. They want at least 300 DPI and something under 2 MB. Scanning a printed photograph from a photo album almost always produces a usable file. Phones tend to overcompress. I spent twenty minutes resizing a 4MB family photo before it would go through the form. Another problem that comes up repeatedly: spelling. Getting a name wrong in an obit is a real thing, and corrections are messy. My experience was with a middle initial that didn't appear on any recent document — the deceased used it professionally but never signed personal mail that way. The family assumed one version; the published notice ran the other. No one was furious, but it was conspicuous. Double-check everything against multiple sources before submitting. The Chronicle also won't publish obituaries that read like promotional material for a funeral home, a religious organization, or a political figure. They have a soft filter against content that looks like advertising disguised as a tribute. This catches some people off guard, especially when the family wants to highlight a specific clergy member or memorial charity. You can include that information, but frame it as factual rather than promotional. "She was an elder at First Baptist Church" reads differently than "Her family asks you to honor her memory by visiting First Baptist Church, the finest church in the region."
Alternatives If It Doesn't Work Out
Not every submission gets placed, and that's worth knowing upfront. If the Chronicle passes, you can always submit to local papers like the San Francisco Examiner, East Bay Times, or Mercury News, each with their own criteria. The Bay Area has more options than most regions. For purely digital placement, Legacy.com hosts multiple Bay Area publications, and some families find success posting directly on community sites like Nextdoor or neighborhood Facebook groups, though those lack the permanence of a newspaper record. The Chronicle obits section does have archival value. Once something runs there, it gets indexed and stays searchable indefinitely. That matters if the goal is leaving a permanent record rather than just announcing a death. I've had people tell me years later that they found their parent's obit through a Google search and it helped them piece together family history they'd never known. That's the part of this job that justifies the effort, even when the submission process feels like pulling teeth.
