Writing and Publishing an Obituary in the Union Leader
The Union Leader has been the primary newspaper of record for Manchester, New Hampshire and the surrounding area for over a century. When someone dies in this region, the obituary page is where most families turn first. It is not glamorous work, but it matters. People want accurate, complete information, and they want it published without the usual nonsense. The submission process starts at unionleader.com/obituaries. You fill out an online form that asks for the basic biographical data, surviving family members, service details, and a short narrative. You can also upload a photo. The total cost depends on length and whether you include a picture. A standard notice with one photo runs somewhere between $150 and $250, depending on the current rate schedule. Longer pieces go up from there. They charge by the line, so word count matters more than people realize. I have submitted dozens of these over the years for people in my life, and the biggest problem I keep running into is the date-of-death field. The system uses a strict MM/DD/YYYY format, and if you enter the date wrong, your entire submission gets flagged for manual review. I once submitted an obituary for my aunt and entered her death date as 11/03/2024 when it was actually 03/11/2024. The system rejected it outright. The workaround is simple but easy to miss: type the date into a calculator or calendar app first, verify it against the death certificate, and then enter it into the form. Double-checking saves you at least a few hours of back-and-forth with the editorial desk.
After you submit, the paper sends a confirmation email within about 15 minutes. If you do not receive one within an hour, check your spam folder. Then call the obituary desk directly. The phone number is listed on the same page. They are usually available between 8 AM and 6 PM on weekdays. Speaking to a real person accelerates the review process considerably. Emails get queued. Calls get answers. There are a few things most first-time submitters do not know. The Union Leader does not publish full obituaries the same day you submit them. Even with expedited processing, the earliest a standard piece runs is the following business day. Friday afternoon submissions almost never make it until Tuesday at the earliest. Weekends and holidays compound the delay. If you need something published urgently, the only reliable path is to call the office in the morning and ask about next-day availability before you even start filling out the form. Another thing that surprises people is how much control you do not have over the headline. The paper assigns its own headline based on the name and a few key details you provide. You cannot write your own headline and expect it to run verbatim. This is standard practice across most regional newspapers. The headline generation is handled by the production team, not by the family. If you want specific wording emphasized, put it in the body of the notice. It will appear that way.
The photo upload feature works, but there are hard limits. The accepted formats are JPG and PNG. Files need to be under 5 MB. If your photo is larger, compress it before uploading. I use a free tool called Squoosh at squoosh.app, which compresses images without visible quality loss. Uploading a 10 MB file will just fail silently, and you will not know why until the paper contacts you asking for a smaller file. Proofreading is the single most important step most families skip. I cannot stress this enough. Once a notice is printed, corrections cost extra and take time. Typos in names, misspelled town names, wrong dates — these are all fixable, but each fix requires a phone call and a fee. Have two or three people read the entire notice before you submit it. Not just the names. The whole thing. A grandmother's maiden name is often misspelled because the form auto-fills from a database that pulled it from a 1998 voter registration record. These discrepancies are real and they happen constantly. If you want the obituary to last longer than the printed edition, consider the digital archive option. The Union Leader keeps online obituaries indefinitely, but the print version is only available for a limited window in the archive section. For genealogical research or historical records, the digital copy is what matters. Both versions contain the same text, so there is no advantage to one over the other in terms of content. The difference is purely in accessibility.
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Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
The most frequent error I see is incomplete survivor lists. Families will list children and spouses but omit parents, siblings, or predeceased relatives. This is a personal choice, obviously. But it causes problems later when extended family members contact the paper asking to add a name. The policy allows one free correction within 48 hours of publication. After that, it is a paid amendment. So get it right the first time by confirming the full family roster with whoever is most knowledgeable about the family tree. Another mistake is using informal language that does not belong in an obituary. Phrases like "passed away peacefully" or "went to be with the Lord" are fine if they accurately reflect the family's wishes, but overly casual language can get pushed back during editing. The staff will not remove it entirely, but they may rephrase it to match the paper's tone. If you want your exact words preserved, make that clear in the submission notes field. The editor will generally honor a direct request to keep specific phrasing intact. Don't forget to include the funeral home information. The Union Leader requires this for attribution. You can list the funeral home by name and location, or you can direct readers to a website. Either way, it needs to be there. Omitting it delays publication while the editor tracks it down. If the family prefers not to name a specific funeral home, you can state "arrangements by [City] Memorial Services" or similar generic phrasing.
What This Service Actually Provides
At its core, the Union Leader obituary service is a local news product with a specific function. It announces deaths, provides service information, and preserves a record for the community. The tagline about honoring lives and preserving stories is accurate in the sense that these notices become part of the public record. Researchers, genealogists, and future family members can access them through the newspaper's archive. That archival value is the real long-term benefit, beyond the immediate announcement. The limitation is reach. The Union Leader serves primarily southern New Hampshire. If your family is spread across multiple states or countries, the obituary will reach a limited audience. In those cases, supplementing the local paper notice with an online memorial platform or a national obituary service like Legacy.com is worthwhile. The Union Leader notice still carries weight locally, but it does not replace broader distribution. There is also the question of timing for international family members. If relatives are abroad and need to review the notice before it goes to print, the window is narrow. Same-day edits are not guaranteed. Submit early, preferably 48 hours before your target publication date, and build in extra time for holidays and weekends. The editorial calendar at the Union Leader fills up quickly around major holidays, and obituaries submitted on Christmas Eve or Thanksgiving Day will face significant delays regardless of what the online form says about processing times.
The process is straightforward if you approach it methodically. Gather the facts first. Verify dates against official documents. Write the notice completely before opening the submission form. Have someone else review it. Upload a properly compressed photo. Submit during business hours. Then follow up with a phone call the next morning if you have not received confirmation. That is basically the entire workflow. Nothing complicated about it, but nothing forgiving of carelessness either.
