Introducing a new product that delivers significant value for funeral homes and $100,000+ incremental revenue for the newspaper - in addition to giving families a special way to remember a loved one. The Local Spotlight for Funeral Homes program offers funeral homes a unique opportunity to feature their newspaper obituaries prominently in the Local Spotlight on the obituary home page.  

 

 

 

Through the Local Spotlight for Funeral Homes, funeral homes receive several benefits they've asked for over the years: no display ads on the obit, significant funeral home branding, revenue from flower sales, and traffic to the funeral home website.  Families receive an obituary with editorial-style features including prominent display on the home page of the newspaper's online obituary section.  And our newspaper partners receive a significant new revenue stream.

 

This product offers a great opportunity to add revenue in Q4.  For more information including pricing and a demonstration, please contact us.

 

It's a job that takes an alert and focused reader, one who reads for full comprehension and notices small details. We receive more than one million entries each month, so content screeners have to work both quickly and accurately... and they do, with an average turnaround time of two hours and an error rate of just 0.00005%.  Our content screeners aren't superhuman, but they are definitely super at what they do.

 

Want to see if you have what it takes to be a content screener? Take the screener test - below are three real-life entries we've received. Which ones would you approve?

 

1. Dear Sheila, I'll never forget your moments together. Though your time was limited, your love for Harry was so special. Never forget it and you'll be together in eternity someday. Love, Carolyn.

 

2. Welcome to the family! - Lou Cifer, Hades, OH

 

3. I miss and love you very much. Ive always loved you. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about you. I will always love you my sweet kyle. Now you are with your only child isabella marie scaia.

 

ANSWERS:

1. Delete. We are suspicious of any entry in which someone talks about the strong relationship between two people. The reason: in more cases than you'd believe, such proclamations are an attempt to validate a relationship that has not been recognized in the obituary, such as a relationship between a man and his mistress. In this case, we checked the obituary and discovered the deceased was survived by a wife named Mary, not Sheila.

 

2. Delete. The name of the town, coupled with the Guest Book signer's name, were enough to give our screeners pause. Further research confirmed this was inappropriate. Why? This was a Guest Book attached to an obituary for an executed serial killer. Placed by his family in an affiliate newspaper, the obituary made no mention of the killer's criminal past. After quickly figuring out the situation, we set up a special screening queue for this Guest Book to prevent inappropriate entries from making it online.

 

3. Delete. When we took a look at the obituary, we found that the deceased had several children, and Isabella wasn't listed among them. The entry is likely to be upsetting to the surviving children, so we won't post it.

 

If you got any of the answers wrong, don't beat yourself up - we benefit from years of experience that have taught us all sorts of things when it comes to Guest Book entries. And our screeners go through 30 hours of intensive training before screening live entries. When they're not sure about an entry, they've got supervisors and advanced screeners as backup. It's a winning process that lets our newspaper affiliates breathe easy when it comes to Guest Books.

 

Public confession is all the rage. We send our private thoughts in to PostSecret.com to be posted online for all to see. We tell our Facebook friends about every calorie we ate and every mile we ran or didn't run. Some of us even reveal our inner struggles or shameful habits to a nation of TV viewers on reality shows like Hoarders. 

 

Has Val Patterson started a trendy new way to share one's secrets? Perhaps. Patterson's self-written obituary, published after his death  includes a paragraph of shocking (and, in some cases, shockingly funny) confessions.

"As it turns out, I AM the guy who stole the safe from the Motor View Drive Inn back in June, 1971. I could have left that unsaid, but I wanted to get it off my chest."

"Also, I really am NOT a PhD..."

 

 

But there's more to Patterson's obituary than true confessions - from start to finish, it's an engaging glimpse into the life of a man we wish we could have known, full of memories of a good life. Through his cleverly written obituary, he captured the hearts and laughter of an entire nation. 

For Breast Cancer Awareness Month this October, we've launched a Memorial Site for all whose lives have been touched by breast cancer. Tens of thousands of users have already visited the brand new memorial site to honor and remember loved ones - in some cases, by lighting the pink candle we're offering in all Guest Books through the month of October.

We hope you'll visit the new Breast Cancer Memorial Site too.

Did you know that Legacy.com can host your In Memoriams online as well as your obituaries? We can publish ads in most formats - even display-ad style In Memoriam notices - adding the same online features as paid obituaries, such as Guest Books, links to charities, and more.

to learn more about publishing your In Memoriam notices online.

 

CLICK HERE to download the Veterans Day ads.