I recently sat down with an old friend to draft her obituary.
My friend was a major contributor to the social health of San Francisco and California over the past 50 years. As an activist and civic leader she is very important to the history of education, art and social services in our region. She made an important difference.
If she and I don't draft and submit her obituary to a city room writer, of both local newspapers, it may not appear.
In San Francisco we rarely have obituaries of important local people in the press any more.
The
S.F. Examiner, which has a San Francisco circulation of 180,000 daily,
does not have a morgue (the old files of a newspaper) since the paper
was de novo a few years ago, using an old newspaper name. So there is
no reference base for the Examiner to write local obituaries.
The S.F. Chronicle, which has a local circulation under 40,000 is going out of business soon, has laid off hundreds of writers and hasn't had an obituary writer for several years.
Hence, important local people have to get their obituaries written by knowledgeable friends and have them submitted to the press.