Families Immortalize Loved Ones, Warts and All, in Paid Obits : Journalism: More newspapers allow survivors to write obituaries--for a price. The policy, intended to conserve expensive newsprint, came with an unexpected bonus--far livelier accounts.

There are hundreds of ways to die. And apparently, there are even more ways to tell the world about it.

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“Late Saturday evening a new star began burning brightly in the skies over Kansas and Missouri,” began one recent obituary in the Kansas City Star.

“AIDS, that’s what did him in,” related another in the Salt Lake Tribune and in the Deseret News last month.

Such obituaries, florid or poetic, moving or witty, are appearing in growing numbers of U.S. newspapers--but not for free. More and more, survivors are paying to have their loved ones immortalized on the obit page.

In these papers, only the famous or infamous are accorded free, extensive obituaries.

Although economics are fueling the trend--more people are dying at a time of soaring newsprint costs--many newspapers that now charge survivors to place obituaries have realized a bonus: The writing is more interesting than the facts-only obits penned by morticians and journalists.

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Some examples from Utah newspapers:

“He had his own ideas and some worked.”

“He paid his bills on time, never cheated a soul.”

“He devoted his retirement years to amassing a fortune of four dollars and thirteen cents.”

A woman who wrote her own obituary in the Cache Citizen in Logan, Utah, said, “My greatest accomplishment was in making a decent and honorable man out of my husband.”

Yet another woman wrote in The Deseret News: “I died today, Jan. 11, 1992, at the age of 38. Awfully young, don’t you think?”

These days, as Michael Gordon, an editor at the Charlotte Observer of North Carolina, said, “If you want to pay the money, you can say just about anything. Your loved ones can be back flying with the angels.”

Since mid-July, the Observer has been charging for all but seven lines of each obituary. The average obit runs $140.

Publisher Rolfe Neill said newsprint has become “white gold,” rising 40% in price this year and an expected 20% next year. The cost of running a page of obits each day is more than $350,000 a year, not including news clerks’ salaries.

Readers, Gordon said, are not happy.

“They’re saying, ‘My mom and dad have been subscribers all their lives and now you’re going to make me pay money to get their obit in the paper?’ ” he said. “It was treading on sacred ground.”

That reaction prompted the paper to return to the previous unpaid obit policy in two small-circulation zoned editions, including the York Observer, which Gordon edits.

Neill said the Observer strove for fairness. The paper retained the short, free obituary so no death goes unnoticed for lack of money, and a reporter tells the story of an unheralded life once a week in a column called, “It’s a Matter of Life.”

The furor over the new policy is subsiding, Neill said. But he noted, “The people who we wounded are still wounded.”

Readers of the Kansas City Star, which began charging for obituaries in January, have not complained so loudly, said editor Art Brisbane.

The paper still provides short obits for free, but restricts details of the deceased’s biography and omits a list of survivors.

Although some families are buying $500 obituaries, most pay about $75.

Economics also forced the change in Kansas City, Brisbane said. The paper was running 14,600 obituaries a year, and the costs were rising fast.

But contributing to the change was the desire to give people what they wanted: a say in how their loved ones are remembered. Survivors were always disappointed when the paper or funeral home limited them.

“Something that should have been a positive service ended up being bittersweet,” Brisbane said.

It was just that tug-of-war between grieving families and the newspaper’s desire to treat all equitably that prompted the Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret News to turn the writing over to survivors 19 years ago, said Tribune publisher Dominic Welch. He is president of the company that handles advertising for both newspapers.

“It was a fun decision. Economics were a minimal part of it,” said Welch. “People read the obits now more than ever.”

A local funeral director estimates that most families pay $200 for a one-day obit, though some pay as much as $1,000 for three days. Most opt for pictures at $10, and some even run two pictures, pairing photos of the deceased when young and aged, or before and after chemotherapy.

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Mark Shenefelt, assistant managing editor at the Standard-Examiner in nearby Ogden, said the obituaries are more interesting but less factual than they were before the paper turned them into ads five or six years ago. For instance, families often do not mention the cause of death.

Some editors say they will resist the change to paid notices.

“It seems to me one of the duties of a newspaper is to write about the rites and rituals of its communities,” said Joe Distelheim, editor of the Huntsville Times in Huntsville, Ala.

John Ferre, a University of Louisville communications professor, bemoans the formula obits that became standard in daily papers by the end of World War II and are still common in many papers.

“All they say was that you or I existed. They don’t say anything about what made us good, what made us bad,” Ferre said.

Although the paid obituaries have more personality, Ferre said, it’s a shame newspapers can’t run them for free. “The one time you get mentioned is when you die, and how did you get that? You had to pay for it. There’s something too bad about that.”

But there is something good about homemade obituaries such as the one in which a woman said goodby to her husband: “I love you dearly, you old poop.”

Or a family’s farewell to their father: “We hope you find Heaven easier than you could find the airport.”

Or one man’s sign-off: “Sayonara, aloha, hasta la vista.”