By: Shawn Moynihan The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., has learned a time-honored, valuable lesson: Never mess with the obituaries page, or you'll really hear about it from readers.
In April, the N&O decided to make its paid obit listings appear alphabetically, in order to make individual notices easier to locate. The move seemed pretty innocuous: The only change was that the type in some obits would break from the bottom of one column to the top of the next.
The feedback, however, came fast ? and furious. Readers called and wrote N&O Public Editor Ted Vaden to voice their frustration with the changes, calling them "disgusting," "annoying," "horrible," "confusing," and "a total mess."
"I read the obituaries every morning, and for the first few mornings I assumed that there had been some horrible goof-up," wrote reader Lynn Voss. "When I realized after a few days that this was on purpose, I was appalled." Linda M. O'Connor of Raleigh opined, "The positioning of obituaries in alphabetical order is dreadful and very disrespectful to the families of the deceased."
In response, the newspaper now plans to go back to displaying the obits the old way, with a separate alphabetical list of the deceased for that day.
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