Navigating the Local Obituary Section of the Times Daily
The Times Daily runs one of those daily obituary sections that most people only think about when they actually need it. It is a straightforward newspaper page, sometimes split into two, where local funeral homes and families submit notices of death. The section is titled something close to "Honoring Lives and Legacies In Our Community" and that is basically how it operates—submit a notice, pay the fee, it runs the next available day, or sometimes holds for a specific date if you request it. The process itself is not complicated, but there are enough moving parts that you will second-guess yourself if you are doing this for the first time while grieving. Here is how it actually works from the inside. You can submit an obituary in three ways. Online through the Times Daily website, by phone with their advertising department, or in person at the newspaper office. The online portal is the fastest route and handles most submissions in under five minutes if you already have the text ready. The phone option is useful if you need a funeral director involved, since many of the larger homes in the area have pre-set templates they use. The in-person route is basically irrelevant for most people—you would only do it if you need to physically hand over a signed authorization or work with someone on a complex layout request.
The fees are structured by word count and photographs. A standard text-only obituary in the Times Daily runs roughly eighty to one hundred dollars depending on length. Each photograph, whether a headshot or a full layout image, adds another twenty-five to forty dollars. Funeral home pre-arranged packages sometimes cover the basic cost, but if you are doing this independently as a family, you are paying out of pocket. The paper does offer a longer "memorial" version that can run for multiple paragraphs with more photos, and that can push the cost to two hundred fifty dollars or more. I learned the hard way about the authorization requirement. A friend of mine called in an obituary for her mother and skipped the signed release form, assuming verbal confirmation from the funeral director would be enough. The Times Daily holds every submission for verification, and they will not publish without a signed document from the next of kin or the authorized funeral home. My friend's notice got stuck for two full days because of that one missing piece of paper. The workaround is simple: get the signature ahead of time. If you are working with a funeral director, ask them to handle the authorization paperwork as part of their service rather than assuming it is covered. The submission window matters more than people realize. The Times Daily cuts off obituary submissions around midday for next-day publication. If you submit after that window, your notice rolls to the day after that. Some people miss this when there is already pressure to coordinate a funeral within forty-eight hours. I always tell families to treat the obituary deadline like a hard cutoff and submit the night before at the latest, even if the text is not fully finalized. You can always edit or add a photo later—the initial submission locks in your place in the queue.
There are a few things that catch people off guard. The paper does not typically edit or suggest changes to the language of an obituary. If you write something unclear, it prints as-is. I once saw a notice that listed the deceased's birth year as 1942 and the death year as 1945 because someone fat-fingered the keyboard and nobody caught it before submission. It was running on the newsstand and nobody at the newspaper flagged it. Proofread twice. Have someone who was not involved in writing it read it aloud. Misprints in obituaries are embarrassing and usually permanent. Another common mistake is assuming the obituary will appear in the same format every day. The layout of the Times Daily's obituary section shifts depending on how many notices come in. Some days it is a single clean column. Other days it is packed and notices run together with minimal spacing. If you need your notice to stand out visually, you can pay extra for a border or a boxed layout, but the newspaper does not guarantee placement on a specific page. You get the section on the day you paid for, and where within that section is determined by order of submission and ad size. The online archive is another practical detail worth noting. Once an obituary runs, it gets posted to the Times Daily website and stays there indefinitely. This is useful for genealogy research and for families who want to share a permanent link rather than a physical clipping. However, the archive does not always include the original photograph at full resolution. The thumbnail version is fine for reading, but if you need a high-quality image for a memorial program or a family keepsake, make sure you have the source file saved separately. The newspaper will not send you the original photo file upon request.
Get the Full Details
There are limitations to the Times Daily obituary process that people do not always consider. The paper primarily serves a regional audience, which means if the person you are honoring lived in a neighboring county or had significant ties outside the local area, the reach is limited. Some families supplement the newspaper notice with an online memorial page or a Facebook announcement to broaden visibility. This is not a criticism of the Times Daily—it does its job well for its market—but it is a factor to weigh if broad outreach matters to you. Another constraint is the lack of interactive features. Unlike some newer digital-first memorial platforms, the Times Daily obituary section does not allow comments, guestbook entries, or real-time updates. If someone wants to leave a condolence message, they either write it in a separate guestbook at the funeral home or reach out through social media. The newspaper treats obituaries as a static published record, not a living memorial space. If you need a faster turnaround or more customization than the Times Daily offers, the local funeral homes in the area typically have relationships with several regional papers and can place notices across multiple outlets in a single submission. It saves time if you want coverage in the Times Daily plus a couple of neighboring publications. The trade-off is that the funeral home may add a processing fee on top of the publication costs. Whether that is worth it depends on how much legwork you want to do yourself.
The bottom line is that the Times Daily obituary process is functional but unforgiving of delays and mistakes. Submit early. Get the authorization signed. Proofread everything. And do not assume the newspaper will catch errors for you. It is a service that works reliably when you give it clear, complete information. Anything less and you are the one dealing with the consequences.
