>At least in the USA, we have to be cautious about "what is an obituary." Newspapers also run "death notices" which (both in print and >online) look much like obituaries, but are actually paid advertisements. I'm not even certain that the terminology ("obituary"=editorial, >"death notice"=paid ad) is consistent across news outlets, I'm just reflecting what I learned from the specific papers I dealt with after >my dad died.

 

Writing as someone who once got paid to write newspaper obits, “paids” are, in print, always in [[agate type]], like sports boxscores; obits look like any other story in the same newspaper.

 

However, textwise, the distinction may be blurring as newspapers cut back on expenses (such as the newbies and interns who cut their journalistic teeth writing obits. Just earlier this week, a young coworker of my wife’s died rather suddenly; when I saw his obit in our local paper I figured they had just printed the text the funeral home sent along since it read like a paid, with all sorts of flowery, non-NPOV language that we never included in obits back in the mid-‘90s regardless of what the funeral home said in the fax, no mention whatsoever of the cause of death, and mentions of a rather wide scope of survivors (the main reason for paids, as families of the decedents usually want to mention relatives outside the scope of the immediate family that newspapers limit their obits to for space if nothing else).

 

Daniel Case

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