That’s a shame, because obits are some great information, and they are one way that the newspaper can both emphasize its usefulness in print as well as deliver long term search engine benefits to a newspaper’s website.

But obits, as practiced by most daily American newspapers, are seen mostly as a revenue opportunity, a way to get some bucks in collaboration from the guy at the funeral home who places the ads. And newspapers do the most counter-productive thing with the content of the obituaries after they are printed, namely brokering the information to a third party.

So, while I admire the ideal of the newspaper obituary (seen here in an image from online Obit Magazine, as practiced, they are now evidence of why the daily newspaper monopoly has deservedly crumbled.

I worked at a small afternoon daily in Petersburg, Virginia called The Progress-Index, once part of Thomson (which drained it dry and pumped cash out) and now Times-Shamrock. It is a quite amazing feat that the newspaper is still around. But that’s a separate story. Every day, someone typed up the obits as they were faxed in by the funeral homes. As editors, we had to read them and proof them. But we charged for them, over a certain number of free words, a deal that was worked with the cooperation of the funeral home. I wish I could recall if the newspaper charged for the words at the end, that included very long mention of the funeral home. Sometimes you even had a LOGO of the funeral home inserted inside the text. Now that’s branding!

If you wanted a few short words, that was free, justified by the idea that the newspaper had “paper of record” status.

Now, us fussy self-righteous journalists of a post-Watergate vintage stick their noses in the air over mixing editorial and subsidized content. Like Jane Pauley did so long ago with the Today Show where she refused to read ads, we will have nothing to do with THAT! But when it came to obits, all bets were off. The practice with our paper was that the editors had to edit the paid obituaries, something that “pure” journalists were not supposed to do. But we did it anyway.

Furthermore, there was a class distinction. We would give something free away to rich and influential people (namely the “news obit”) and then charge poor and less influential people a few bucks for a “paid obit.” Furthermore, we would run the obit in ugly looking type that was less nice than the real newspaper.

The only way newspapers got to this cheapskate journalism was over money. In the old days, newspapers would just publish information from readers. Weddings, parties, visitors, and yes even obits, were written by the family and submitted to the newspaper, which edited and verified them. They saw it as a service, of being a part of the community. The funeral home merely confirmed the deaths, so there were no fakes.

The American practice of obits was different than the practice in the U.K. In London newspaper, the newspaper obit is taken seriously. Writers are honest about the faults of the deceased. The people featured in obits were interesting, as well. Not just for the rich and powerful, but anyone interesting might have a chance at a news obit.

I go into this long explanation because at the death of the father of a close friend, a quite newsworthy one, the newspaper online obituary linked to a third party side, Legacy.com, where one could leave comments about the person, as well as read the obituary for a certain amount of time. It came at the same time I got a request to write about an online obituary service, Tributes.com launched by Monster.com founder Jeff Taylor in February of 2008. That site aims to link up with other media partners that include radio stations, and combat the monopolized obituary industry, citing a recent study by Northwestern University that talks of the pressures on newspaper obits.

“The Internet is transforming the way people grieve,” said Taylor in a press release, “and the Obituary classifieds was the last laggard classified section that hadn’t made a meaningful transition from print to online.”

There are significant revenues though figuring out what they are takes some work if you aren’t in it each day. Newspapers don’t like to publicize how much they make on dead people, and few newspapers publish the rates online as it is such an insider club. Andrew Alexander, writing in the Washington Post’s (NYSE: WPO) blog, puts their revenues at millions, and said that their section gets three times the traffic as them metro section. Some obits can run as much as $500. Most newspapers (how nice!) only offer the paid obits as pre-paid. Granted, running an obituary desk is a staff cost for newspapers (a great explanation of the reason is online at the West Central Tribune of Willmar, Minnesota). There is nothing morally wrong with charging for obits, especially if families want to put in all sorts of junk about their beloved that has no interest to readers except for entertainment value.

But that makes this a plum opportunity for competitors.

My question is what are newspapers going to do about it? Thoughts:

1. Careful with third parties. Why share revenue with a third party? Newspapers need to own the information themselves. When a person dies, they become a part of a historical record, and people from generations on will be interested in the lives of the deceased as long as there is geneology, which has Old Testament roots, so it will be around. So why should a newspaper share those long-term keyword and search engine benefits with an outside site, when THEY are the ones that are doing the hard work of processing the obits? Certainly, they need revenue but building your local brand, franchise and web traffic must come first. And some newspapers might need third-party partners to help with online, but keep it at a distance, just in case.
2. Why do they charge to keep a newspaper “up” on the site after only a year? Some newspapers leave these notices up permanently. Many do not. The few dollars made on charging for this might be nice, but long term, this information keeps the newspapers website as the central hub of community information.
3. Keep the funeral homes at arm’s length. Deciding on how and if you have paid obits is one thing, but remember that being to close with the funeral home is not good for your brand. Funeral homes are customers of newspapers, not partners.
4. Why not allow comments on obits for a longer time than just after the death? This is a way for local papers to build readership, especially with partners like Facebook.
5. This discussion applies to weddings and engagements, too. It was only a decade or so ago that newspapers published these free, with the simple but elegant idea that when readers read the notices, they would look at the ads for bridal shops, jewelers and department stores. Then they started getting cheap, started charging, and the ads dried up. This happened at the Times-Dispatch and Virginian-Pilot, and it ruined the Sunday lifestyle section revenue.
6. Newspapers need to understand that obits, even of the lowly, have an information value. Doing research for a consumer products company’s marketing department, I found clues to the early history of the product from an obit.
7. This will be more critical in an age of tablet newspapers, if that comes. Local parties will want a simple way to see their local obits, with a local spin, and the newspaper is the best source.
8. Matrix of web links are aided by obits. For newspaper sites to be powerful, they need to build up a network of linked pages. Imagine the SEO benefits of having all your newspaper obits published as separate pages on the Internet? All of a sudden a small community paper begins to truly dominate the information.
9. The outside revenue threat is great. Craigslist is a very imperfect product, yet with only a few employees has stolen billions in revenue away from newspapers. This can also happen with obituaries. Yet newspapers can compete with Craigslist by offering better, more tailored ads, and a larger audience.
10. Connect with churches, libraries and historical societies. Funeral homes aren’t the only ones that deal with the deceased. Opening up connections with local churches allows for all sorts of revenue. What if newspapers published eulogies and services in podcast form? There are many opportunities, not only with advertising revenue but from ancillary services.
11. Legacy newspapers need to consider how their microfiche archives (and photos of the deceased) can be tagged, displayed and turned into text. Don’t just leave it up to Google; figure out a way to digitize.
12. Don’t discount the value of the printed edition. The printed obit means something to families, and no one wants to keep a fading home laserprint of a loved one when they can have the actual printed clipping, perhaps encased in lucite.
13. What happened to births? Newspapers used to routinely publish births, and local newspapers still do. They need to appear in local papers again, or at least online.
14. This isn’t easy. It’s not as simple as just posting all your obits online. It needs a few weeks of thinking how your community dies, what rituals there are, and crafting a solution that builds your newspaper brand and franchise. How much gets printed, and how much goes online? Photography, keywords, tags, typography and style issues with words are important, and must be crafted locally.

Garland Pollard is a freelance web editor/consultant and business writer in Sarasota, Florida.

If there are some who dare to actually see a future in newspapers, I suggest that these are a few of the books that are essential reading.

1. The Hard Way by Alexander Brooke. This is the tale of one man and the York Coast County Star in Maine and how he grew a small paper, only to sell it and see it ruined by the likes of a new generation that would ruin the industry in a decade.
2. The Story of the New York Times by Meyer Berger. A plodding history about how the Times became great, dates from about 1951.
3. The Great American Newspaper: The Rise and Fall of the Village Voice. by Kevin McAuliffe. This is how Ed Fancher and crew built the greatest, and original, alt-weekly.
4. Handling Newspaper Type and My Paper Chase, both by Harold Evans. I haven’t read Paper Chase, but I am sure it will be useful and instructive.
5. Paper Tigers by Nicholas Coleridge. This tells the story of the newspaper owners of the late 1990s, the generation that raped the industry and drove it into the ground. Most interesting; the profile of Conrad Black of Hollinger.
6. The Astonishing Mr. Scripps by Vance Trimble. How E. W. Scripps built his empire.

In Economics 101, it’s the classic “free rider” problem. Who will attend planning meetings and the statehouse? Who will investigate police and crime? Will news only get covered when there is an outburst, and it somehow gets posted by some unwashed blogger? Let’s call it the era of “Don’t Taze Me Bro” journalism.

But it does not have to be that way. There is a role for your the local paper, because in some cases, these local franchises have been the leading local brands in their markets.

That being said, there is a problem for newspapers. The incredible 30 percent margins, unbelievable power and unassailable position of your regional paper in past years have all made it hard for you to know what to do, and unable to act like the underdog. So far, your paper has redesigned pages, shortened articles, cut staff, eliminated bureaus, reduced paper size and redesigned your website now about, oh, 10 times. What the industry has done is put the newspaper in a severely reduced competitive position at a time when you need your scale and power more than ever.

Newspapers are the point where radio was after the advent of television. For years after television arrived, radio networks ran Hoover-era schedules of soap operas, dramas and westerns, even as television encroached on its audience. Radio’s audience declined. But one day, clever station managers realized that if radio was to survive, new leadership would have to remake it completely. Somewhere in the 1950s, the proper mix of news, d.j.s, traffic, weather, music and talk radio was invented, and the great radio stations survived. Rock music arrived. FM took off. And radio’s KDKA, WABC, KYW and the like thrived again.

The Greatest Regional Brands

Like the great radio stations, newspapers are important regional brands that need not go the way of the regional department store. The regional newspaper brand names mean something to the community. They evoke a region like no other. Use that legacy.

The Hartford-Courant. The Virginian-Pilot. The Richmond Times-Dispatch. The Los Angeles Times. Louisville Courier-Journal. Newark Star-Ledger. The Baltimore Sun. The Miami Herald. The New York Post.

These franchises have legs, and the public trusts them, even though they curse the editorials. Use that legacy and history. People like the idea of reading a newspaper. Do not let your brand go the way of the regional department store. Unless you act, The New York Times will do to regional daily papers what Macy’s did to Burdine’s, Marshall Field and the rest.

Pronounced Dead Many Times

The newspaper has been pronounced dead many times, as have other media. A timeline:

• 1910: Recorded music will kill the orchestra.
• 1930: Radio will kill the newspaper, and the music industry.
• 1950: Television will kill the newspaper, and movies.
• 1982: Cable will kill the newspaper and the network news
• 1995: The Internet will kill the newspaper and the music industry.
• 2002: The Internet will save the newspaper and kill the movie industry.
• 2009: Kindle kills the newspaper, and bloggers instead scoop the greatest story of all time, the Second Coming!

Let’s get serious. Newspapers can reinvent their century old brands.

What to do?

First, believe that there are solutions. The important point is not to give the pessimism an inch. Instead, realize that there is a changed environment, and you need to establish a process for coming up with, and implementing, ideas. New ideas. And you have to completely commit to killing sacred cows. Your staff might be smaller, and have to work differently. Radio killed off Dark Shadows. CBS took the risk of moving Edward R. Murrow from radio to television.

To start, we suggest that newspapers:

1. Change the percent of R.O.P. advertising vs. insert advertising
2. Greatly upgrade the status of carriers
3. Selectively use bureaus for promotional purposes
4. Make the newspaper unique, even at higher cost
5. Drop online partners that don’t help you
6. Force the web staff and print staff to compete
7. Cut back on zoned editions
8. Stress the local brand, not wire copy
9. Ditch ombudsmen and send them out to report.
10. Move sports reporters to city desk
11. Go on old-style crusades
12. Emphasize news side balance
13. Re-hire retired staffers part-time
14. Make the design stodgy
15. Decrease photo size
16. Reorganize classifieds
17. Make weddings and obits free
18. Change minority recruiting practices
19. Don’t rest on old ad rates
20. Bring humor back into the paper

Last year, we put together a FREE 10-page PDF report called 20 Ways to Re-Invent the Local Paper. A link is below and here 20 Ways to Save Your Newspaper. The sheet includes the above ideas, each with descriptions.

Black Cow Press believes these sections are more important than ever. But beware; you must be careful that you don’t sell the sections so much that you forget to sell the actual newspaper. Here are some quick tips; please contact us if you need direction and ideas. Frankly, sometimes the idea and inspiration bank falls a bit flat, and you need help. In addition, while these ideas are general ones, you will need SPECIFICS for your individual market.

And remember. While special sections are NOT a loss leader, you can underprice a bit (though always offer a better deal to regular advertisers). Here’s why. Getting the advertiser to advertise JUST ONCE gets them back in your billing system.

• Regional promotions: Talk to the merchants on a street or district that needs store traffic and customers. It might be “Elm Street, Your Arts District.” You, the newspaper, essentially become the “revitalization” committee and bring everyone together. Offer two simple rates, one expensive size and one affordable one. Offer a free web page to help bring the customers together, and tell them that you will run 100 words about their business, if they get the copy to you. Remember, the web is cheap.
• Talk to your editorial staff: Your editorial staff is DESPERATE for additional pages and sections, as their edit hole has shrunk. As them if THEY have any ideas for special editorial sections. They will often have great ideas. Just don’t ask them to do your work, namely gathering the listings or copy.
• Thematic promotions: Themes always work. Consumers care little whether it is “National Car Repair WeeK” so stay away from junk like that. Instead, do a theme on hair salons, or art galleries, or repair shops, or antiques stores.
• More than once: When doing special sections, offer them a more-than one time rate. Or consider having a big promotion one week with larger ads, and then very small ads that run thereafter that would have only the business names. So if it is a Get Your Car Tuned! promotion, then a small tombstone ad with business names runs for weeks after with just the names of the businesses.
• Rescue old sections: Do you have a regular section that is falling flat? Reduce its frequency and redesign it as a one-off promotion. While at a daily paper, I took a crummy all advertorial real estate section and added some wire copy and turned it into a featured tabloid insert.
• Charity Case: Stay away from those smarmy “Don’t Drink and Drive Promotions” and anything that is negative. It won’t bring customers to your advertisers, and associates your retail store with something negative. Do consider doing a promotion with a local blood bank or Goodwill truck. The ad might be run by the charity, but the shopping center merchants pay to advertise that the truck will be there.
• Go back: Look at archives from 20 years ago to see what your newspaper was doing then in the way of successful special sections. Perhaps the nostalgia will help your retailer decide to try it again.

Email Chief Content Editor Garland Pollard for insight and quick ideas, or to bring him to your paper for a quick pep talk. Or call me at (703) 745-8602. Got a struggling daily paper? Be sure to read his 20 Ways to Save Your Daily Newspaper.

The reason? It provides local news and a singular focus on the community. It also puts advertising in a place where it is not intrusive. Instead, surveys show that again and again, one main reason readers like newspapers is the advertising.

We’re experienced in newspapers, whether daily or weekly, business or consumer.

We believe in print.

What we can offer:

• Writing. We like writers, and we can find you writers when you are pinched.
• Advertorials: We are not afraid of advertorials, and can work with your sales department find writers to write sections.
• Promotional help: When you have special sections, talk to us about promotional one sheets, fliers, promotional copy and positioning.
• Redesign ideas: We are not big fans of many of the newspaper redesigns of the last 10 years. What newspapers often need is more modest changes, including packing more words onto the page. We are not a graphic design firm, but we can help you in your redesign by resisting trends of the last few years.
• Insert and special section ideas: Weekly real estate sections, supplements and inserts have suffered with the recession, yet there is still a need for them. Talk to us about your needs. And click here at our Special Section Ideas page for more specifics.

Email Chief Content Editor Garland Pollard for insight and quick ideas. Or call me at (703) 745-8602.