Newspaper publishing is a difficult, possibly dying, business. The newspapers are trying to produce revenue wherever they can, sometimes in ways that don't make sense. Many newspapers are price gouging bereaved families with exorbitantly priced death notices in an inept way to try to make ends meet. The result will probably be the opposite of what the newspapers want: death notices will probably disappear, leaving the newspapers with no revenue at all from that source. Of course, future genealogists will also lose a valuable resource.
Alan D. Mutter writes in his journalism blog Relections of a Newsosaur, "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."
You can read Alan D. Mutter's article at http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2010/04/death-notice-price-gouging-why.html
