Writing Obituaries That Actually Work Online
Most people writing obituaries have no idea how digital archiving changes the process. The Tyler Newspapers run obituaries through a specific submission pipeline now. You send it in, and it gets formatted into both print and their online archive. That sounds straightforward until you hit the edge cases. I worked on a publication for roughly eight years covering local news. I watched dozens of families submit obituaries and see them published wrong because nobody explained the quirks of the system. The most common problem is length. The print edition has strict word limits, but the online archive does not. If you write a 600-word piece assuming it will only live online, it gets cut down to about 300 words for print. Your story loses details you thought were important. The workaround is simple: write your full version first. Then trim it deliberately to fit the print constraints before submitting. Don't let the editor do the cutting for you. You will lose control of the narrative.
Tyler Newspaper Obits Honoring Lives Preserving Stories In The Digital Age
The digital shift changed more than just where the obituary lives. It changed what information people expect to find. Twenty years ago, an obituary was a notice. Today it is a memorial page. Readers want photos. They want links to funeral home websites. They want the family's requested donation information formatted clearly. Most submitters do not include a high-resolution photo file. They paste a thumbnail into the body of their email. The photo gets rejected or looks terrible on the website. Send a JPEG or PNG at least 1200 pixels wide. Name the file something generic like Smith_John_1945_2024.jpg. Do not name it IMG_8472.JPG or whatever your phone auto-generates. That causes confusion during processing. Here is something people miss about the submission process. The newspapers use a legacy content management system for their archives. That system does not support hyperlinks in the body text of obituaries. You might think you can include a clickable link to a memorial fundraising page or a life summary website. You cannot. The link becomes plain text. It is not clickable. The workaround is to include the full URL on a separate line. Readers can copy and paste it into a browser. It is not elegant, but it works. I learned this the hard way when I submitted an obituary with three embedded links and spent twenty minutes on the phone trying to figure out why they were not rendering correctly. The format matters more than the tone. Editors will let you write whatever tone you want. Serious. Lighthearted. Religious. Secular. But they will enforce structure requirements. Standard obituary structure follows a predictable pattern. Full legal name. Age. City of residence. Date of death. Surviving family members listed in standard generational order. Predeceased relatives. Service details. Donation requests. This order is not arbitrary. The typesetting software expects it. When you flip the order, things get misaligned or dropped entirely. I have seen entire service detail paragraphs disappear because they were placed before the family listing instead of after it. Stick to the conventional structure. Save your creative expression for the biographical paragraph in the middle.
There are real limitations to the digital approach. The online archive is searchable, which is helpful. But the search function is basic. It indexes by name and date only. It does not index by hometown, employer, or military service branch. If someone is searching for their grandfather who served in the Army and the obituary mentions that detail, the search will not surface it unless they also have the exact name. The workaround is to submit cross-references. Some families include an alternate name or a nickname in the body text. "Known to friends as Bob" or "Formerly Robert James Miller." This increases the chance the piece surfaces in a search. The newspapers do not advertise this feature. You have to build it in yourself. Timeline is another factor nobody talks about. Submit your obituary at least seventy-two hours before the planned publication date. The standard turnaround is forty-eight hours, but that buffer disappears during busy periods. Memorial Day weekend. The week after Christmas. Late November. I have seen obituaries stuck in queue for five days because the editorial team was short-staffed and the family did not account for holiday slowdowns. If timing is critical because of the service date, call the obituary desk directly. Do not rely on email submission alone. A phone call moves your piece to the top of the review queue. It takes forty-five seconds and prevents a lot of stress. Cost is the final practical consideration. The Tyler newspaper charges by word count for the print edition and by flat rate for the online-only posting. As of the last time I checked the current fee schedule, a standard print obituary runs approximately one hundred eighty dollars for the first three hundred words. Each additional word costs around four dollars. Online-only posts are cheaper, usually between sixty and eighty dollars depending on whether you include a photo. If you want both print and online placement, you pay both fees. Some families assume one submission covers both. It does not. You must explicitly request dual placement and pay accordingly. The cost difference between just online and both formats is significant enough that families sometimes regret not requesting the broader reach from the start.
Get the Full Details
The process is not difficult. It just requires attention to a few details that are never obvious until you encounter them. Write complete, then trim. Send proper photo files. Account for the link limitation. Follow the structural convention. Build in alternate name searches. Submit early with a backup plan. Pay for what you actually need from the beginning.
