St Paul Dispatch Obit Honoring Lives And Preserving Stories Through Detailed Death Notices

Writing An Obituary That Actually Gets Published In The St. Paul Dispatch

Most people don't realize that death notices and obituaries are two completely different products at the Dispatch, and mixing them up will either get your notice rejected or cost you twice as much money. A death notice is basically a factual announcement—the deceased's name, age, date of death, surviving family members, and where the service will be held. An obituary is a full narrative piece. It can include biography, achievements, personality, photos, and it runs for significantly more words. The pricing structure reflects that gap. Death notices run around $150 to $250 depending on length and layout. Full obituaries with a photo typically start near $400 and can climb to well over $800 if you're paying for width or color placement. I learned this the hard way in 2019 when my uncle passed and I submitted what I thought was a straightforward death notice. I'd written a three-paragraph biographical sketch instead of a concise factual listing, and the funeral home that was helping us had no idea what to do with it. We ended up paying for a corrected version plus a rush fee because the original submission missed the publication window by six hours. The Funeral Directors Association of Minnesota has a basic obituary template, but the Dispatch uses its own form, and they do not accept substitutions. You fill out their fields or you write to their exact specifications.

St Paul Dispatch Obit Honoring Lives And Preserving Stories Through Detailed Death Notices

Here is the actual process I've used successfully since that mistake. First, call the St. Paul Dispatch obituary desk directly. The general newsroom number will route you somewhere useless. The obituary desk staffs weekday business hours and sometimes Saturday mornings. Have the full name, including middle name if it's commonly used, the exact date of death, age at death, city of residence, and the names of immediate surviving family members ready before you pick up the phone. They will ask for all of this, and if you don't have it, they will still publish what you give them but you'll be stuck calling back to amend later, which delays the run and sometimes causes errors in the final printed version. Second, decide whether you want a death notice or an obituary. If you just need to inform people that someone died and where the service is, the death notice is the economical choice. If you want to actually describe who the person was, their career, their hobbies, their character, and maybe include a photograph, go with the obituary. I've seen people write 600-word obituaries with photos and then discover too late that they only paid for a bare-bones death notice format. The Dispatch will run what you paid for, not what you intended. Third, if you're including a photograph, the Dispatch requires a high-resolution digital file. I once submitted a JPEG that looked fine on my laptop screen at 72 dots per inch, and the printer rejected it outright. They want a minimum of 300 DPI at the size you want it reproduced. A standard portrait photo from a modern phone camera usually works fine if you save it at the full resolution and label it clearly. Do not submit a screenshot from Facebook. Do not submit a thumbnail. The file naming convention matters less than the actual pixel dimensions, but labelling it with the deceased's full name avoids any confusion during the handoff.

There is a nuance that almost nobody catches on the first try. The Dispatch does not verify biographical claims the way a newspaper's newsroom verifies a crime report or a city council meeting. They run what you send them, but they will flag obvious discrepancies—dates that don't add up, surviving relatives listed as predeceased when the death date is clearly later, that sort of thing. I had a case where a sibling listed a death date of 2015 for an uncle who was still alive at the time of publication. The obituary desk caught it and called me. I fixed it. That call probably saved me from a public embarrassment that would have circulated for years in print and online archives. Another practical detail: the submission deadline is typically 2:00 PM Central Time for next-day publication. If you miss that cutoff, the notice goes to the day after, and you may lose the service date if the funeral is scheduled within 48 hours of death. This is why having your information ready before you call matters. Some funeral homes have relationships with the paper and can submit through a dedicated portal, but if you're doing this on your own, the phone line is your best option. The online submission form on the Star Tribune and Dispatch website works, but I've seen it timeout during peak periods, usually around weekends when most deaths occur and families are trying to get notices out quickly. The editing process is minimal. You can request one round of revisions at no extra charge if you catch an error before the issue goes to press. After that, corrections run at the same rate as new copy, which is steep. I've corrected my own mistakes—a misspelled street name, a wrong funeral home location, a living sibling accidentally listed as deceased—and each correction cost me an additional $75 to $125 depending on the length. Factor that into your review process. Read the proof three times before you approve it. Have someone else read it a fourth time. The dead don't care about typos, but their families and friends will notice.

If you want the obituary preserved in the newspaper's archive, make sure it's published in both print and on the Star Tribune's digital platform. The Dispatch shares its obituary content with the larger Star Tribune website, and that digital presence is where most younger family members and distant relatives will find the notice. The print version has a smaller but more dedicated readership, mostly older residents and people who still buy the paper regularly. Both run simultaneously, so there's no need to pay extra for dual publication—it's automatic once the notice is accepted. There are scenarios where the Dispatch simply cannot help you. If the family is estranged and disputes over the content are ongoing, the obituary desk will not adjudicate. They publish what the submitting party provides and move on. If the deceased died under investigation by law enforcement, the paper may decline to run identifying details until the case is closed, depending on the circumstances. And if you're trying to publish an obituary for someone who died out of state but had connections to the St. Paul area, the Dispatch will accept it, but they may ask for clarification about why a Minnesota paper is running the notice. This is not a rejection, just a procedural question. The cost question comes up constantly. People assume obituaries are free because they appear in the newspaper, but they are advertising space sold at premium rates. The per-column-inch pricing means a short death notice costs a fraction of a full-page narrative. A typical obituary with a photo runs about 150 to 200 dollars per inch of column width, and most published pieces fall between two and four inches. That puts the realistic range at $300 to $800 for a standard piece with a photo. Memorial packages that include online memorials, guest books, and flower ordering are available through the Dispatch's partner vendors, but those are optional and add another $50 to $150 on top of the base copy charge.

I've found that the best approach is to write the obituary yourself, bring it to the Dispatch in the format they want, and submit it with plenty of time before the cutoff. Don't rely on the funeral director to handle every detail unless you specifically ask them to and verify the final copy. They are busy, they make mistakes, and the proof you receive may not be the proof you wrote. Check it carefully. Then approve it and move on with what is already a difficult week.