People react quickly to change — sometimes before it even happens.
That was the case a few days ago with Tommy Cullens. He was one of several people — most of them, like him, residents of Winter Park — who wrote to the Sentinel to protest its new obituaries policy: “I understand your newspaper is discontinuing the publication of obituaries on a free basis.
“It is unbelievable that you could be so penny-pinching,” he wrote; “I know of no other newspaper in the country that is this inconsiderate.”
To paraphrase Mark Twain, the report of the death of our death notices was an exaggeration. And the Sentinel is far from alone in what it will be doing with its obituaries — just one of several changes coming throughout the newspaper.
Starting Tuesday the Sentinel will start publishing only basic information — name, age, city of residence, date of death and funeral home — about the death of anyone in Central Florida, as well as Central Floridians and their families elsewhere.
That’s news. We don’t charge for that, and we never have — although some funeral homes, upon whom we rely for obituary information, have been charging their clients to pass that along.
Cullens, though, was concerned that free obituaries no longer would include the place of birth, the names of relatives and other information that those notices have contained in the past. In truth, even that wasn’t enough for many grieving survivors. They wanted lists of accomplishments, names of friends, statements of appreciation — basically eulogies.
Eulogies are nice, but they aren’t news.
So the Sentinel always has given families the option of buying advertisements on the obituaries page to honor the memory of their lost loved ones. We have called those funeral notices because they typically include the funeral information that obituaries do not contain. And that’s why you often see someone’s death reported twice on the same page.
Those paid notices will continue to be available for people who would like to include more than will appear in the basic obituaries about someone who has died.
Cullens is right, though, that the move to shorter free obituaries resulted from penny-pinching. Economic doldrums have reduced advertising, newspapers’ financial lifeblood, while newsprint has remained one of our greatest costs. That has been happening nationwide, and newspapers throughout the country are responding with similar adjustments.
But those pressures won’t affect the Sentinel’s daily featured obituary. We’ll continue to write a complete article each day about at least one person who has died. And, of course, we’ll continue to write full articles about the deaths of noteworthy individuals — people whose names are familiar to all, or most, of our readers.
The shorter obituaries, though, are just one of what Editor Tim Franklin called, “Some of the most significant changes we’ve made to the paper in the past few years.”
Those changes will be showing up throughout the Sentinel this week and next, including the Quick Read feature moving from the bottom of the front page to Page A2 and truly becoming a five-minute digest of the day’s top news developments. The weather page — with more emphasis on local weather and more reports from other cities — will move to the back of the Local & State section, which should make it easier to find.
The most significant changes, in fact, will occur in the Local & State section. It will grow from what usually has been a six-page section to one of eight or 10 pages, including a page of regional news from the Sentinel’s Central Florida bureaus and another of news from throughout the state.
Other sections, too, will undergo overhauls, coordinated by Associate Managing Editors Steve Doyle and Monty Cook, but you’ll have to wait another week to see the new feature section replacing Living and A&E.
Change — whether a new obituaries policy or the placement of a favorite feature — can be jarring at first. I’d suggest that you give it some time, see how you like it and then let us know what you think.
Manning Pynn can be reached at 407-650-6410 or at Public@OrlandoSentinel.com.
Copyright 2002, Orlando Sentinel
