Placing a Tribune Obituary Without Losing Your Mind
I spent the better part of last Tuesday trying to get an obituary placed through the Tribune's online system for a relative in the Milwaukee area. By Thursday morning it ran. It wasn't smooth. Here is how I ended up there and what I learned along the way. The Tribune obituary platform is basically a portal that feeds into a network of Tribune newspapers, which means submitting through it can reach multiple papers at once. The headline version of the feature, the "Honoring Legacies" angle, is really just their branding for longer-form, narrative obituaries that go beyond the standard death announcement template. Standard obits run by the line or by the inch. Narrative ones are priced differently and usually require more back-and-forth with the editor. Here is the workflow. First, go to tribpub.com/obituaries or the specific paper's site if you know it. You will fill out a form with basic bio data, survivor names, service information, and a biographical sketch. If you want the narrative version, you write or paste a longer piece. There is a character count limit somewhere around 2,000 to 3,000 characters for the free version, and you pay extra if you go past that or want photos. I do not know the exact current pricing because Tribune changes it by market and by paper. Call the local office if you need precise numbers before you submit.
The practical problem most people hit is the photo upload. The system expects JPEGs under a certain file size. I uploaded a high-resolution scan from my phone and got rejected three times. The workaround was to open it in any image editor, resize it to roughly 1200 by 800 pixels, compress it to below 500 kilobytes, and resubmit. It went through immediately after that. If you are working with a scanned printed photo, use a scanner app like Adobe Scan or Google PhotoScan, export as JPEG at medium quality, then resize before uploading. Another thing nobody tells you about Tribune obituaries: the copy-editing process is not automatic. Your text goes to a human editor at the paper, and they will cut things. They cut adverbs. They cut filler sentences. They also cut anything that reads like an advertisement for a funeral home unless it is clearly editorial content. I had a draft that was too long and included a paragraph about how wonderful a particular funeral service was. The editor trimmed it down to two sentences and called me to ask whether the rest was intentional. It wasn't. I said fine, keep the two sentences. If you want the obituary to feel like a story rather than a list, start with a single defining detail instead of a birth date. Most template-driven obits open with "John Smith, 72, of Chicago, died on..." That works. It is efficient. But it reads like a database entry. If your goal is honoring a legacy, open with something that anchors the reader in who the person actually was. A habit, a job, a place they loved. Then move chronologically or thematically from there. I usually suggest structuring narrative obituaries in three acts: early life and shape, the middle years where the person did their work, and the later years where the legacy became visible through family, community impact, or something concrete they left behind.
There are a few pitfalls I see repeatedly. The first is survivor listing. People include every living relative, which inflates the word count and makes the piece drag. Pick the core survivors. Grandchildren, great-grandchildren, siblings if relevant, a spouse or partner. You can note "survived by numerous nieces and nephews" if you want to acknowledge extended family without turning the obit into a phone book. The second pitfall is dates. Verify them. I once submitted an obit with the wrong year of birth because I misread a faded tombstone photo. The editor caught it during a fact-check call, but it delayed publication by a day. Third, check the paper's submission deadline. Most Tribune papers publish obituaries the same day or next day if you submit before the afternoon cutoff. Miss it and you wait until the next printing cycle, which for some papers means a full week delay depending on the edition. Cost-wise, expect to pay somewhere in the range of two hundred to eight hundred dollars depending on length, photos, and whether you are running it in a print-only edition or a digital-plus-print package. Digital-only is cheaper and faster. Print placement in the daily paper is more expensive but reaches a different demographic. Some families choose to pay for both. I have found that running it in the main market paper and cross-listing it through the Tribune portal to reach other affiliated papers in the region is usually the most cost-effective approach if you want broad visibility. The system also lets you add a guestbook, which is useful if the family wants to collect messages. That feature is optional and sometimes not available in every market. Ask when you submit. It saves time later if you need it.
Get the Full Details
One edge case that trips people up: if the deceased was a veteran, the military honors and service details need to be phrased carefully. Tribune editors are used to this, but they will still cut anything that looks like a press release or a promotional piece for a Veterans Affairs organization. Keep it factual. Rank, branch, years of service, major deployments if relevant. That is enough. The editor will handle the rest. If you are in a hurry or the family is scattered across multiple time zones, use the portal but also call the local bureau directly. I did that last year for a Milwaukee submission and got answers to three questions in twelve minutes that would have taken days via email. The portal is the submission mechanism. The phone line is the reality check. Bottom line: Tribune obituaries work well if you respect the format constraints and budget enough time for the edit cycle. The "Honoring Legacies" style is available but not automatically granted. You request it by writing past the standard template and being willing to lose some words in the edit. Most families end up with something between four hundred and seven hundred words, which is enough for a proper story without turning into a memoir. I usually aim for six hundred words. It fits the space, it carries the narrative, and it does not get chopped into pieces by an overzealous editor.
