Submitting an Obituary to the Terre Haute Tribune-Star: What Actually Happens
The Terre Haute Tribune-Star runs obituaries daily, and getting one published is a straightforward process if you know the channels and what they're actually looking for. I've helped several people through this over the years, and the confusion usually comes from not distinguishing between a death notice and a full obituary before you even pick up the phone or log in. The Tribune-Star accepts obituary submissions through three main channels: their online submission portal at tribestar.com/obituaries, email to their classifieds department, and phone submissions directly to the advertising office. Online is fastest. Email works if you need to attach a photo. Phone is fine if you're working from notes rather than a prepared manuscript. They publish obituaries Monday through Saturday. A standard obituary runs in the printed paper the following business day unless you specify a future date, which you can do up to about two weeks out if you're coordinating with a funeral home. Same-day publication is possible if you call the advertising desk before 10am and it's still being composed, but don't count on it during holiday weeks.
Here's what most people don't realize upfront: the Tribune-Star charges by the line for the printed obituary, not a flat fee. As of my last check, the rate was roughly $12 to $14 per line with a minimum of about 10 lines, so a typical 15-line obituary runs around $180 to $210. Keeping it concise actually saves money, which is the opposite of what grieving families want to hear but is genuinely how it works. You can also prepay or arrange payment through the funeral home handling arrangements, which is the standard approach in Vigo County. The death notice option is cheaper and available through the same channels. It's basically a smaller, templated block of text that lists the facts: name, age, date of death, surviving family, and funeral service details. No biographical narrative. These run for about half the price of a full obituary and get the same daily placement. Families who want just the essentials and are watching the budget tend to go this route. Photos are accepted but they're where things get tricky. The Tribune-Star wants JPEG or PNG files at least 600 pixels wide for decent print quality, and they prefer them under 5MB so the file transfer doesn't choke. I once submitted a beautifully lit portrait of a woman who'd been a longtime Terre Haute school teacher, and it got bumped to grayscale because the file was nearly 12MB and the system rejected the color profile during upload. I had to resubmit through email with a compressed version and lost the morning slot entirely. It meant the obituary went out without a photo on the first run. Always compress to under 3MB before sending, even if your file looks fine to the naked eye.
Another common issue is misspelled names or incorrect dates. The proof is sent to the contact person before publication, and the window to correct it is narrow — usually a few hours. I've seen families miss the proof email because it landed in spam, and by the time they found it the next morning, the obituary was already locked for print. If you're not getting the proof, call the office directly and ask them to verify. Don't assume it went through. For the actual writing, there's no required format, but the Tribune-Star's editors prefer obituaries that are factual rather than flowery. They'll run whatever you send as long as it's accurate and appropriate, but they routinely trim inflated language or remove promotional material about funeral homes unless it's part of a sponsored advertisement. If you want the full text preserved exactly as written, work closely with the funeral director who files it — they know the editors and can flag problem areas before submission. Memorial contributions, the charity or scholarship people often list, are included in most obituaries at no extra charge. Just add a line at the end like "In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to..." and it stays. Some families try to add links to crowdfunding pages or donation portals, and the Tribune-Star generally doesn't include those in standard obituaries. Those need to go in a separate tribute ad if you really want the visibility.
Get the Full Details
If you're dealing with an older relative whose military service is worth noting, include the branch, rank, and years of service. The Tribune-Star has run pieces specifically honoring veterans, and having that information upfront makes it easier for their staff to format correctly rather than scrambling to verify details after the fact. You can also attach a DD-214 or service record if the submission is going through a funeral home that's experienced with this process. The digital version stays on tribestar.com indefinitely, which matters because some people assume the obituary disappears after the print run. It doesn't. It remains searchable and gets picked up by the major obituary aggregators within a day or two, which means people outside Terre Haute who knew the deceased can still find it. That's one of the real practical advantages over doing it purely through a funeral home's website alone. There are legitimate downsides to this system. The per-line pricing model penalizes longer, more detailed obituaries, which means people who want to write a substantive life story end up paying more and sometimes have to cut meaningful content. The proof window is tight and easy to miss. And if you're not working through a local funeral home, navigating the submission process from out of state — which happens more often than you'd think — adds friction that can delay publication by a full day.
For anyone handling this remotely, the workaround is to designate a local contact, usually the funeral director, who can answer the phone and make corrections in real time. It removes the timezone problem and ensures the proof gets caught before the deadline. It's a small thing that prevents a lot of headaches. The Tribune-Star's obituary page also archives past notices, so if someone is trying to locate a relative's notice from a few months or years ago, it's searchable by name on the site. That's useful information if you're doing genealogical research in Vigo County and hitting dead ends at the courthouse.
