Local Paper Obituary Guidelines

here are 4 main papers that serve the Flathead Reservation. They all have different guidelines and some of them charge. The following is a brief description of each with their email address. We will submit them to these four papers and ask for them to run the free version unless otherwise requested.

Daily Circulation - The Missoulian - obits@missoulian.com Newsroom 523-5240

The Missoulian will run a death notice on the first day and follow it with obituary.

The death notice is free and the first three inches of the obituary is free. It can be quite costly to run an obituary in the Missoulian but compared many of the other daily newspapers in the country their rates are very inexpensive. They currently charge $13.50 per column inch and $10 for a photo. If requested they run an obituary a second time but they will not give the first three inches for free. They also reserve the right to edit for content so that no copyright laws are broken. Their deadline to publish is 4:30 pm daily.

As of 6-20-2011 the paper requires prepayment.

 Weekly Circulation – The Valley Journal news@valleyjournal.net 

676-8989

The Valley Journal is a free newspaper that comes out on Wednesday morning. It will publish a 100 word obituary for free and if the family wants to have a longer obituary they need to go to the office and prepay for it is ran out of their advertising department. Their deadline to publish is Monday at 10 am.

 Weekly Circulation -The Lake County editor@leaderadvertiser.net 

883-4343

The Lake County Leader is a weekly newspaper that charges a fee with a circulation time of Wednesday afternoon. As of February 1, 2011 the Lake County Leader’s parent company Flathead Publishing based out of the Kalispell area has started a per inch policy that makes it almost as expense as the Missoulian. The Lake County Leader charges $25.00 for the first 6 inches and $5.00 per inch thereafter. Their deadline to publish is Monday at 10 am.

Weekly Circulation – The CharKoosta - charkoosta@cskt.org 275-2830

The CharKoosta is the weekly newspaper of Confederated Salish & Kootenai tribes and is sent to every tribal member household in the United States and is also available on the newsstand on the Flathead Reservation for a nominal fee. It will publish a free obituary and photo but may bump the obituary to the next week if the paper is full and the individual is not a tribal member. When this happens they still put in a service notice. It has a circulation date of Thursday and has a deadline of Monday at 5pm for obituaries.