Newspapers are getting the obit business fatally wrong

I began writing this as a comment on Steve Buttry’s blog, which today has two posts about a Lancaster, Pa., newspaper’s new paywall on its online obituaries for out-of-town viewers. I was reacting to the editor’s response to Steve’s initial post criticizing the move, but I figured I have a little more to say about it than just a comment.

What newspapers are doing failing to do with their obituary business model should be frighteningly familiar to them by now.

Newspapers: I think it’s very predictable that someone is going to come in and “craigslist” your obit business. Hell, we could even put the obits on Craigslist itself today if Craig gave us a new category.

The point is that you’re charging for something that you have no cause to charge for. You didn’t write the obit, you didn’t add any value to it. All you ever had was the claim that you’re the only central place for information, so people should pay you whatever you ask. You’re charging for it because you used to be able to, and at some point over the years that metastasized into you feeling entitled to it. So entitled, that one of you has now decided to demand payment for access to them.

This simply doesn’t work any more. Online, anyone and everyone can get any information from anyone. Media who have charged for something offline, solely based on the fact they were the only distribution game in town, are now displaced. (If you need a case study, interview the people you laid off from your Classified Department in the past few years).

The smart course right now would be to make the obits free — both for placement and access. It’s not hard to see that within a few years, someone is going to buy http://obituari.es (that’s actually available — someone grab it and just tip me when you get rich) and set up a free service that captures most of the market.

That won’t happen, because — stop me if you’ve heard this one before — newspapers won’t give up the currently large but eroding revenue stream to have a chance to capture the smaller but growing future revenue stream.