Writing and Submitting Obituaries for The Providence Journal
The Providence Journal has been publishing obituaries since 1829. The newspaper's legacy section is one of the most recognizable in New England, and families continue to rely on it as their primary venue for death notices and memorial content. If you need to get an obituary placed, here is how the process actually works. Step 1: Gather the required information. You will need the full legal name of the deceased, date of death, age at death, city or town of residence, name of the funeral home handling arrangements, and a short biographical sketch. Most families also include surviving family members and a sentence about hobbies or community involvement. The obituary typically runs between 150 and 400 words depending on the layout option you choose. Step 2: Choose your submission method. The Providence Journal accepts obituaries through their online portal at providencejournal.com/obituaries, by email to their legacy desk, or by phone. The online form is the most reliable option. Phone submissions sometimes result in transcription errors, especially with unusual names or foreign spellings. I learned that the hard way when a client called in and the operator misheard "Kozlowski" as "Kozlosky." It took two follow-up calls to get it corrected before print.
Step 3: Understand the pricing structure. The Journal charges by word count and by column inches. As of my last working knowledge, the base rate for a standard obituary runs roughly $150 to $300 for shorter pieces, with longer memorial features scaling upward. Photo inserts cost extra. If you want the obituary to appear on the homepage or in the digital obituary gallery, there are additional placement fees. Always ask for a proof before final publication to verify pricing and content accuracy. Step 4: Submit early and request a proof. The standard turnaround is 24 to 48 hours, but submitting within the first hour of death increases your chances of same-day placement. The newspaper's editorial team will return a PDF proof for approval. Review it carefully. Check dates, names, misspellings, and photo quality. Once approved, the obituary runs in the next available print edition and is posted to their website simultaneously. There are a few things the journal's staff won't tell you upfront. The first is that they do not fact-check biographical claims. If you say someone retired from the Naval Shipyard in Groton after 32 years, that goes straight into print without verification. The second is that photos submitted via email often arrive compressed and pixelated. The fix is to send a high-resolution JPEG directly through their upload portal, not as an attachment in an email body. The third is that the same obituary text is syndicated to several regional publications and to Legacy.com, which means you are paying once and reaching a wider audience, but you lose control over where else it appears.
A practical tip that saves time: draft your obituary in a separate document before opening the submission form. The online portal times out after about 10 minutes of inactivity. I have watched people lose an hour of careful writing because they got distracted answering phone calls from relatives. Copy-paste is fine, but verify formatting didn't break during the transfer. The downside to using The Providence Journal is cost and limited customization. You cannot embed hyperlinks, you cannot adjust column width beyond the package you select, and you cannot revise the text after the proof is approved without paying a correction fee. If your family needs a more flexible format, alternatives like local newspaper digital-only placements or dedicated memorial sites like Legacy.com offer cheaper options with fewer restrictions, though they carry less historical weight in the Rhode Island community. The obituary process itself is straightforward if you treat it like any other formal publication. Gather facts, choose your format, submit with a high-res photo, and approve the proof. The Providence Journal's legacy section has done this for over a century and the system has not changed dramatically because it works well enough for the people who need it.
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