craigdailypress.com

An ongoing debate among some community newspapers throughout the country right now is whether or not to charge people for running obituaries.

The Craig Daily Press does not charge for obituaries. Working closely with Grant Mortuary, we provide a short death notice as soon as possible. That notice provides the date of a person's death and service times. We follow those up with more in-depth obituaries that reveal more about about the people's lives, where they were from, their occupation, their hobbies, who they are survived by, who preceded them in death and any charities to which they wished friends to contribute.

Because of the serious and solemn nature of obituaries, these notices are of the utmost importance to the Craig Daily Press. Family members often keep these synopses in scrapbooks to honor their loved ones. They also serve as historical records of Moffat County residents.

The bottom line is that obituaries are often a final tribute to a person and that must be treated with respect.

We do edit them for style and keep them as strait forward as possible while attempting to balance that with the wishes of the family.

Sometimes, however, unfortunate things can happen, such as a name gets misspelled, a survivor is left out or a date is incorrect.

Because we feel obituaries are so important to the immediate family, our readers and as a historical record, we have a policy that basically says we will run an obituary until we get it right. It doesn't matter where the error originated or whether the error was one of omission. It will get printed correctly. Period.

Other communities have chosen to charge for obituaries.

Editors for these publications have argued that sometimes the families did not appreciate when obituaries were reworded or wanted to add items that might seem frivolous to some publications.

With a paid obituary, the family has complete control over what is printed.

So, we have not run into complaints regarding style changes that have been made in obituaries. We also tend to be a little less style minded with these notices, which allows the family greater leeway in what gets printed in an obituary that might get cut out of a news story.

Ultimately we see running obituaries as more service oriented than many other newspapers. Our philosophy, according to our policy, is to honor the requests of the families of the deceased whenever possible.

The Craig Daily Press does not accept obituaries over the telephone. We prefer it come directly from a funeral home. Information must be received in writing with names printed clearly and legibly and including a contact telephone number.

The Craig Daily Press has forms available for families submitting obituaries without the assistance of a funeral home.

We will also publish a photograph with the obituary if one is submitted. We can take color or black and white prints, or pictures can be e-mailed to the office in jpeg or tiff format. Photographs that are printed onto regular paper rarely reproduce well.

The photograph is returned.

The Craig Daily Press does not require a cause of death as some newspapers do under certain circumstances. If the information is provided by a funeral home or family, we will include in the obituary.

We do not generally report a suicide in an obituary and we only report suicides as news stories in instances where the suicide occurs in some public fashion or if the suicide involved a public official.

Obituaries are printed during incredibly stressful times for families and we are mindful of that fact so we treat the situation with tact and care.

Obituaries don't run on the front page but we consider them as important as any story that might run on our front page.

They are testimonies of lives led by our families, friends and neighbors so we obligate ourselves to treat them with a special amount of care.

"Bleeding the Black Ink" is a weekly column that aims at getting readers better acquainted with the Craig Daily Press, the First Amendment and the newspaper industry. Do you have a question or an issue for an upcoming column? Call Terrance Vestal at 824-7031 or email him at tvestal@craigdailypress.com.