Writing For The Paper: What Actually Happens When You Submit An Obituary
Most people don't realize how much control you actually have over the final product, or how little. You hand them a name, a date of death, and a paragraph about the person. They run it. That's the public version. The reality inside the newsroom is different.Tacoma News Tribune Obits Honoring Lives Preserving Stories In Print
The Tacoma News Tribune has a dedicated obituary section that runs daily. It's not a free for-all like some of the smaller papers. There's an editor assigned to this stuff, and they review every single submission before it goes to print. That's a good thing most of the time, but it also means your draft will get edited, sometimes heavily, if it doesn't fit their format. Here's what I've learned from watching this process up close over the years. The obit desk at TNT operates on a tight turnaround. If someone passes away on a Tuesday morning, the window to get something acceptable in print by Thursday or Friday is roughly 24 hours. After that, you're looking at the weekend edition or next week's paper. Missing that window doesn't kill the piece, but it absolutely changes how visible it is. The submission process itself is straightforward. You go through the Tacoma News Tribune website and fill out their online form, or you call the obit desk directly. They accept email submissions too, though phone is faster if you're working against a deadline. You need the full legal name, date of birth, date of death, city of residence at time of death, and at least one surviving family member's name with their relationship. They also ask for a brief biographical sketch, usually 150 to 300 words, plus any service details.
Here's the thing most people get wrong. They treat the obit like a resume. They list every job the person ever held, every school they attended, every organization they joined. The obit desk will cut all of that down to the essentials anyway. What actually matters in a printed obit is the human texture. A sentence about how the person made the best pot roast in the neighborhood, or how they never missed a high school football game regardless of the weather. That's what people remember. That's what gets passed along. I dealt with a specific edge case last year that illustrates how this works. A family submitted an obituary for an elderly woman who had been in multiple facilities over the years. The address they provided on the form was her current facility, which was forty miles outside the Tacoma metropolitan area. The obit editor flagged this immediately because the paper's distribution map matters for ad revenue and editorial decisions. We ended up listing her as a longtime Tacoma resident who died while receiving care in a nearby community, which satisfied both the factual accuracy requirement and the paper's geographic guidelines. The fix took about twenty minutes once we understood the actual problem. Photo submissions are another area where people consistently stumble. You can send a digital photo, but it has to meet minimum resolution standards. Anything under 300 DPI gets rejected or replaced with a lower quality version that looks grainy in print. The safest approach is to submit a high-resolution JPEG or TIFF that's at least 1200 pixels on the longest side. If you're scanning a physical photo, use 600 DPI as your starting point. Scanning at 300 DPI often produces files that look fine on screen but fall apart in the print layout.
There's also a pricing structure most people aren't aware of upfront. The base obituary runs a certain length at a set price. Each additional line beyond that costs extra. Longer featured obits with multiple photos cost significantly more. Some families don't realize this until the bill arrives. If you're working with a tight budget, keeping the text concise and limiting photos to one or two is the only way to control costs. The newspaper isn't going to warn you about this ahead of time unless you ask. Another counter-intuitive detail: the online version and the print version are often different. The digital obituary can include links, extended guest books, and sometimes video content. The print version is strictly text and photos with hard space limits. Families sometimes get confused when they see their loved one's name formatted differently online versus in the newspaper. These are treated as separate products by the editorial staff, and each follows its own style guide. If you need something expedited, there's an emergency rush option. It costs more and it's not guaranteed, but it exists for situations where immediate family needs the notice out quickly. I'd recommend calling the obit desk directly rather than using the online form for rush requests. The form system has a queue, and a phone call puts you in front of a real person who can prioritize your submission.
Get the Full Details
One common pitfall I see repeatedly is families submitting obituaries that were written by funeral homes rather than by people who actually knew the deceased. These read like promotional material for the funeral service. The obit desk will still publish them, but they tend to feel stiff and generic. The best obituaries come from people who sat with the deceased in the last months of life, who noticed the small things. A good obit should make readers think of someone they know. The Tacoma News Tribune also archives all obituaries digitally after publication. This is useful for genealogical research and for families who want to preserve a copy. The archive is searchable by name and date, though the search function isn't particularly sophisticated. If you're looking for an older obituary and can't find it, checking the library's local history section or contacting the paper directly is usually more effective than relying on the online search tool. Proofing is your responsibility, not the paper's. Once you submit the draft, you'll get a chance to review a typeset proof, but this proof is generated automatically and may contain formatting errors or typos that didn't exist in your original submission. I've seen middle initials dropped, incorrect dates inserted, and entire sentences rearranged by the layout software. Reading the proof line by line before approving it is essential. Most approvals happen within a few hours, so there's no excuse to just click approve without checking.
The obituary section as a whole serves a community function that goes beyond simple announcement. It's one of the last places in local journalism where individual lives are documented with some care. The editors understand this, even if they're understaffed and overworked. Treating the process with the same respect you'd give the person you're writing about usually results in a better final product.
