As Baby Boomers age, their interest in obituaries will grow. And newspapers are being advised to do a better job with them or risk losing them, like they did classified ads.
"As the Baby Boom generation ages, obituaries of people who have influenced their world are likely to be of great interest. So the audience for well-crafted obituaries of prominent people from this generation is likely to be large and growing," advises a report from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
The report -- "The State of the American Obituary" (available online after registration) -- advises the nation's newspaper publishers to respond by growing the newsprint space devoted to obituaries and devote more staff to doing them.
"Simply publishing death notices and a few news obituaries each day will not be enough," the study advises.
According to the study, economic pressures will tempt publishers to reduce space and/or staff devoted to obituaries, "but this is risky given the interest in obituaries and the size of the Baby Boom generation now in the life stage when interest in obituaries is most likely to be highest. Its essentially local nature makes obituary content among that most likely to retain importance with a local publisher’s audience."
Traditionally, there are two means of publicizing a death in a newspaper -- the death notice and the obituary.
The death notice is essentially a paid ad provided by a funeral home. The newspaper traditionally has control over the content and tone of the obituary and, in the past, was published as part of the paper's news content, but more and more newspapers are charging for obituaries too.
The study recommends the following for newspapers:
- Connect their online obituaries to social networking resources such as Facebook;
- Allow obituary readers to post comments, pictures and videos of the deceased;
- Offer computerized “obituary alert” services -- a college alumni office might ask to be alerted whenever one of its graduates passes away, for example;
- Make obituaries easily accessible to people with niche interests -- for example, people who have served in the U.S. Army might be interested in reading obituaries of
- fellow veterans;
- Create a “one stop shop” for mourners that includes information on such items as counseling services, places to buy flowers and books on grieving;
- Capitalize on potential uses of obituary databases to open obituaries to research -- a medical researcher, for example, might be interested in exploring the frequency of cancer deaths in a certain geographic area.
"...because the printed obituary still is seen as the most effective way to reach most people interested in a given death, the majority of the economics related to notifications is still associated with print," said the report, but it cautioned:
"... as the printed audience shifts online, it is likely that, just as was the case with homes, jobs, and cars, the printed notice may ultimately be viewed as secondary by important parts of the audience."
Legacy.com, an online obituary service, sponsored the study.
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