That is quite a coincidence and to make it even stranger, i saw that obit because it was listed right next to the obit of someone I know who died rather young. It’s a small world, at times. Sorry for the loss of your friend.

This has happened to me. I still have several newspaper subscriptions but they're for online access. I don't regularly check the Murky News (used to be named the SJ Mercury News) and when I do, I don't always look at obits. But not infrequently when I do, I encounter a notice of death of someone I knew in some way.

Same as your description, the timing coincidence always seems strange.

Strange that he had little contact with Philly (school) and I only caught the San Francisco reference out of the corner of my eye. And he had changed his name's spelling.

I wonder, are there data services for newspapers to pick out geographic references and forward any from anywhere to the service's customer newspaper in the area mentioned? Or, do they scan the public sources themselves, assuming the school in Philadelphia was mentioned in the original copy?

Writing obits used to be a training ground for newly hired reporters. Only places like the NY Times and others of that stature continue to give that beat lots of organization and coverage by more seasoned writers. I've seen for a number of decedents I've known that the obit copy seems to be written by family members and that's what gets forwarded to the mortuary, legacy.com, and the ultimately some newspapers. Some are so poorly written and clownishly awful as to be laughable. I saw one recently for the wife of a much older work colleague I didn't know (in another part of the country) that spoke about how this woman made the world a much better place because of her recipe for lemon bars that she shared with family and friends and how neat and clean she'd always kept her house.

Obits now cost money to print, unless the person is well known for some reason, an the death is newsworthy. So I'd guess he had said something to his family about wanting it. When my father died, we followed his request to print the obit in our home town paper. As I recall, it was about $150 some 22 years ago.

I met two entirely different people a couple of weeks ago with ties to my hometown. One has a husband who is a cousin to a classmate of mine. The other has a daughter who is a classmate to my daughter. Her dad and I went to the same high school a few years apart, but we had brothers in the same grade. Our dads worked at the same location, but for different companies.

In these days of shrinking paper sizes, the obits do take up space and have some readership draw.

Triggered by this thread, I went to the Mercury's obit page online to see what was there. There were notices for average and ordinary people, not anyone particularly newsworthy. I saw one for a school teacher, another for a paving foreman, another for a nurse. San Jose is a corner of a large and populated area but it itself is not a major city like Philadelphia (as you well know) but the population is now over 1 million (in an area arbitrarily divided in to many cities that have expanded to now abut one another without a break in between) and it's the third largest city in California. Maybe that's why the obits seem to cover many typical residents rather than restricting it to people of some notoriety, still the vibe of a "small town"?

Take a look for yourself, I didn't need to sign on. Clicking on "read more" linked to legacy.com, so that's the info source they use or what they get goes there.

The people who are not famous beyond their own families and friends are the ones who have the paid obits. Check the M-N and see how much they charge. Some obits are not paid, true, The one I saw today was in the paid section. The Inquirer won't pick up an average guy just because he got an MBA from Wharton in 1978, and has no other ties to the area.

I do know that the paper will choose someone's obit to turn into a story-form.

"Herein, how much does it cost to run an obituary in the newspaper?

An average obituary can easily be $200.00-500.00. Costs vary by publication. Newspapers charge by the line and can average $450 for a complete obituary. The average obituary cost begins at $200.00 and increases due to the amount of content, including a photograph and the length of the obituary."

I remember looking up an obit for one of my parents's friends in a local N paper online, and surprisingly, there was another posted on the same day. Two different friend groups entirely, but they were both men 85+ at the time, so not a huge shock. It was just odd to see it.

I don't know how frequently or infrequently there's a charge for publishing an obit but the amounts sushipup mentions are not terribly expensive for most folks, other than those of limited financial means. If the charge is some equivalent of per word or line, someone who wants to send out a communication inexpensively doesn't need to talk in detail about Uncle Brad's wood carvings or Aunt Tillie's knack for training dogs.

I go to my old home town's website every day just to check the obits. It used to be I was looking for friends of my parents who might have died. Now it's MY friends and classmates.

My local paper's policy: "The [paper] publishes death notices at no charge. These consist of the deceased's name, age and place of death, as well as the funeral home handling arrangements.

Obituaries that include additional information may be published as paid notices."

I couldn't easily find how much a "paid notice" cost, but probably would end up similar to everyone else's experience -- the more elaborate, the more it would cost.

Death notices and obituaries appear on the back of the first section of the paper. In addition, always on the bottom of the front page, are "Deaths": a simple list of name, age, and city. A few years ago the paper changed ownership and eliminated the front page "Death" list. So many letters of complaint and outrage followed that they reinstated it.

In journalism there are Death Notices and Obituaries. The former are paid notices, written by family or a funeral director. They are not unlike classified ads -- another source of merriment for their unintentional hilarity. The latter are written by reporters and are reserved for individuals whose lives were of general interest to the public. Obits are edited, unlike 'notices'. Obits also may contain negatives about the person; notices rarely, if ever, do so. (Speak no ill of the dead.)

chisue, other than those who have been through the process, I doubt most casual obit readers/scanners know the difference between one kind and the other.

I wonder if anyone has ever made the effort to collect ridiculous or tasteless obits.

A friend told me of an instance many years ago concerning someone he knew who had a little known aspect to his life as a married man but with a gay lover. Apparently his male companion submitted an obit/eulogy to the newspaper before the family did and for several days, a very "in your face" description of what a wonderful partner this guy had been to him, and one available for meet-ups with all of his gay friends, while shackled with the difficulty of hiding this most important part of his life. He died of AIDS. Pretty gruesome stuff.