We have two new features that we’d like to tell you about today: obituaries and an events newsletter. (Yes, we realize the odd juxtaposition.)
Starting today, Cardinal News will provide obituary information. We have been asked by readers to provide this service, and had been looking for some time to find a way to do this across our geographic footprint without burdening our limited staff’s time and resources, or requiring extra work on the part of funeral homes.
Plus, we in no way wanted to gouge families by charging exorbitant fees.
We are partnering with Regional Obituaries that already has relationships with funeral homes to gather the information from many localities. The platform will allow our readers to search by name, date, locality and funeral homes. We plan to support this feature through sponsorships.
We wanted to provide this service because we, and so many people we encounter, are remarking that they often don’t hear of someone’s death until after the services because fewer people are putting notices in newspapers and fewer people are subscribing. The need became more urgent for Cardinal to step up and fill the daily need for this information because many papers are stepping back from daily publication, and will rely on the U.S. Postal Service to deliver their papers.
The other thing we often hear from people is that they don’t know about festivals, concerts, shows and other entertainment until after the event.
We recently soft launched an Events page that harvests information from venues throughout our coverage area. If you haven’t already tried its search tools, please do, and let us know what you think. You can always reach us through news@cardinalnews.org.
Starting Aug. 3, we will send out The Weekend newsletter every Thursday. It will feature a few don’t-miss events, and will provide a listing of Friday through Sunday concerts and shows. You can sign up here for The Weekend, along with any of our other free newsletters.