The 'Newsosaur' Takes on Newspaper Death Notice 'Price-Gouging'

By: Alan D. Mutter Sure, newspapers are hard up, but exploiting bereaved families with exorbitantly priced death notices seems to be a distasteful and strategically inept way to try to make ends meet.

I stumbled across the problem this week when I tried to buy a death notice in my local paper, the San Francisco Chronicle, which proposed charging $450 for the one-day run of a crappy-looking, 182-word death notice.

Instead, I decided, with the consent of my friend's widow, to donate the money to a college fund for their four children. But she and I remain appalled that the Chronicle would do this to families at the moment of their most exquisite grief.

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