Funeral notices: Looking for obituaries on STLtoday
I never ceases to amaze me, but I’m getting used to it: Obituaries are always, always among the most heavily read sections of a news web site. I won’t suggest that the obits and funeral notices on STLtoday approach the kind of traffic that, say, our Cardinals coverage gets.
But it’s a lot.
Finding them isn’t very hard. I don’t mean to sound like a broken record about the drop-down navigation on STLtoday. But the truth is, it really can be your friend if you warm up to it. And that’s the easiest way to get to the obits.
Recapping: Run your mouse over the navigation channels just under the STLtoday.com logo at the top of the page. If you’re over News, you’ll find all the news subsections and related content. Same with Business, Sports and whatnot.
Obits are under News. Click and go.
There’s also an “Obits” link in the footer on every page of the site — the big black box at the bottom of every page.
And to be perfectly clear: That link will actually take you to our paid funeral notices. To find any of the obituaries written in our newsroom, look for a link just below the list of death notices that says, “News obituaries from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Associated Press.”
Finally, if you’re really a nut about obituaries, you can subscribe to our RSS feeds with updates each day.
Kurt is the director of social media for the Post-Dispatch, where he has worked since August 2002. He's been a journalist since 1982, covering municipal government, courts, education and two hurricanes as a reporter before becoming an editor. 
That’s because everyone likes a good lie — and obituaries are the best at it.
It’s funny you should mention obits…my family and I were just talking the other day about how ridiculously expensive it is to get an obituary in the Post, let alone with a picture included! Our local papers do it as a service for the family at no charge. It’s atrocious to charge the money you do to let people in the area know that a family member has passed away. Are you guys that hard up for subscriptions?
yngstlmom: Thank you for your comment. I’m sorry you think the funeral notices are too expensive. We’d like to think they’re in line with what other newspapers of our size charge for similar services.
It is not usual for newspapers to charge for extended funeral notices. I shared your concern with Kathy Perks, director of advertising operations. She replied to say: “We also offer a free service which would include the deceased’s name, plus four lines of text. Anything additional would be a charge. Our packages are sold by the inch, so that would include text and/or a photo.”
I have worked at other newspapers — some substantially smaller than the Post-Dispatch — that also charge for extended funeral notices, but also offer small free death notices.
I lived in St. Louis for the first 25 years of my life. I am now 83. I went to Soldan High and to Washington University, where I had many friends. For the past number of years, I have been reading the Post on the NET,enjoying many of the articles, but most importantly, I have been able to scan the Obituaries, which used to appear as one list on the side of the page, when I asked for that.
With new set up, I have great difficulty finding the Obits,and when I am successful, I have to wind through, not just the names, but also their entire Obits. I likes the old obit setup much better. It was much easier to find the names of people I knew and their family members.
For the last five days, the obit set-up hs only included the very same three names, whereas in the past each day there would be at least 30 or forty names. I would really appreciate if you could go back to the original listing of the names which I could scan and then select the ones that I wish to read more about. Thank you- Al Mellman, Los Angeles