Getting Obituaries Published in the Times News of Burlington NC
The Times News runs obituaries for the Burlington and Alamance County area every day. If you need to submit one, the process is straightforward but there are a few details people consistently mess up. I will walk you through what actually happens when you deal with their obituary desk, because the online pages don't tell you everything. The Times News obituary page at timesnews.com is where most people start. You can search past notices and submit new ones through their online portal. The basic submission form asks for the deceased person's full name, age, city of residence, date of death, surviving family members, and service details. It also asks about photo preferences. You upload a digital photo if you want one included. That is the standard process.
Times News Burlington Nc Obituaries Honoring Legacy Connecting Community Through Farewells
When I first tried submitting an obituary for my neighbor's father back in 2019, I ran into a problem that nobody warns you about. I filled out the form correctly and submitted it before 3pm on a Tuesday. The obituary ran the next morning, which seemed fine until I realized the funeral home had already been listed incorrectly in the draft. The Times News uses the information exactly as you type it. They do not fact-check family relationships or cross-reference with funeral home records. If you type the wrong chapel name or list the wrong order of service, it prints wrong and stays wrong until the next day's correction, which most families never see. My workaround was simple but I wish I had known it upfront: I called the obituary desk directly after submitting online. Their number is listed on the contact page of timesnews.com. I verified every detail with the editor on duty. That call took about four minutes and saved me from having to issue a correction later. The staff is helpful but they assume you have double-checked everything yourself because they handle a high volume of submissions during weekday afternoons. They will not catch errors for you. Here are the practical details you need to know before you submit anything.
Cost is the first thing that surprises people. A standard obituary in the Times News runs about $150 to $250 depending on length and whether you include a photo. Longer notices with more biographical detail or multiple photos run higher. Some funeral homes in the Burlington area will handle the submission and billing for you, which removes one step from the process. If you submit directly, you pay by credit card on the website and receive a confirmation email. The notice typically runs within 24 hours if submitted before the daily cutoff, which is usually around 3pm local time on weekdays. Word count and layout matter more than you might think. The Times News gives you a certain number of lines based on what you pay for. Basic notices are usually 8 to 12 lines. If you go over, you get charged extra per line. I have seen people write lengthy life summaries and then get hit with unexpected fees because they assumed the price covered any length. Write your draft first, count your lines, and then trim if needed. Be ruthless about trimming. Most people do not need to list every cousin's spouse unless it is specifically meaningful to your family. The online archive is useful but incomplete. You can search for obituaries going back a few years on the Times News website, but not every notice from every year is digitized. If you are looking for a historical obituary from 2015 or earlier, the online search might return nothing even though the paper published it. The physical newspaper archive at the Alamance County Public Library is the reliable fallback for older records. The library staff can pull microfilm or bound volumes from the basement archive area. It takes about ten minutes to locate a specific date if you know roughly when the person passed. I learned this the hard way when researching a family member who died in 2013 and could not find the notice online.
Get the Full Details
There is a common mistake people make with the surviving family section. You do not need to list every surviving relative. The standard format includes spouse, children, grandchildren, and sometimes parents or siblings. What people often do wrong is listing deceased relatives in the same breath as survivors without clear distinction. The format should read something like: She is survived by her husband, children, and grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her parents and one brother. Mixing those two categories in the same sentence creates confusion and sometimes requires the newspaper to send it back for clarification, which delays publication by a day. Another detail that trips people up involves church and funeral home information. If you list a specific church or funeral home, make sure the name is spelled correctly and matches what appears on their own materials. Small typos like misspelling a street name or using an outdated name for a funeral home that has since rebranded will not stop publication but it does look careless. The Times News does not verify these details against external sources. It is your responsibility to get them right the first time. For people who want the obituary to do more than just announce a death, you can request a memorial advertisement separate from the standard obituary. This is a paid display ad that families sometimes place alongside the obituary. It costs significantly more, usually $400 to $800 depending on size and placement. The benefit is that it runs in the same section as the obituaries and gets more visibility. The downside is that it is purely promotional in nature and some families feel it cheapens the notice. I have seen both approaches work well and both fall flat. It depends entirely on the family's goals and budget.
If the Times News is not the right fit for your needs, there are alternatives. The Burlington Free Press and other regional papers also run obituaries. Online platforms like Legacy.com aggregate notices from multiple newspapers and allow you to submit once for distribution across several outlets. That can save time if you want broader reach, but it also means less local control over the final text. The Times News remains the primary choice for most Burlington-area families because the audience is people who actually knew the deceased and the surrounding community. One last thing that nobody mentions: if a death occurs on a weekend or holiday, the cutoff for Monday publication is earlier than usual. The staff may process weekend submissions on Friday or early Monday morning depending on how busy they are. If timing is critical, call ahead to confirm the current cutoff rather than assuming it is always 3pm. The paper has changed hours a few times over the years and the website is not always updated immediately when those changes happen.
