Knox TN Today launched obituary links this week. Just click on a name and the link will take you to the full obituary online. We will update death notices daily, based on information posted on the websites of area funeral homes. We’re doing this as a public service – at no cost to families or funeral homes. Death notices should not be a revenue stream.
Compiling the obituary links falls to this writer, bringing me full circle to my 1970 career (yes, it was less than a year) at the daily Knoxville Journal. All the reporters sat at desks facing the front. Cubicles had not made the scene. Tom Sweeten, city editor, sat at a desk facing us. When a funeral home called in, a reporter had to take dictation on the obit and submit to typesetting.
Sweeten would kick the call to the most junior reporter available. Me.
But if I was on the phone already, the obit went to someone else. Since I had no beat or particular sources, I started calling folks I knew in the neighborhood. “Got anything going on?”
It was the beginning of my specialty in community news.