Local Media Consortium Announces Partnerships For Revolutionary Obituaries Solutions

DENVER, Nov. 5, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The Local Media Consortium, a nationwide alliance of leading local media outlets, announced agreements today with Legacy.com and Memoriams.com to provide a complete obituary solution for local media companies and death care professionals.

Through Memoriams.com, funeral directors may place correctly rated obituaries and death notices into over 2,700 newspapers and local news websites. Memoriams.com solves the funeral director's number one challenge of pricing and placing print obituaries in out-of-area newspapers.

"The LMC has been intensely focused on finding a network play for this critical business category," said Michael Heene, CEO of Adpay. "We're honored to have been selected by the LMC to provide the only obituary placement network which connects newspapers and funeral directors. Memoriams.com is already bringing increased content and revenue to a number of the LMC members, and we look forward to providing this benefit to the entire LMC membership."

By removing the obstacles and inefficiencies of placing obituaries in multiple publications, Memoriams.com's integrated and easy-to-use system allows death care providers to focus on providing the best possible service to the bereaved.

Legacy.com's Next Generation Obituary is a state-of-the-art offering that brings newspapers closer to readers with a dynamic new online experience; closer to funeral homes by featuring their brand and promoting their services; and closer to families by providing ways to honor a loved one's memory like never before. In a recent survey of over 1200 respondents, the Next Generation format was preferred 3-to-1 over the standard obituary format.

"This new obituary product is the most dynamic, innovative, and complete offering we have ever put into the marketplace," said Stopher Bartol, Legacy.com's CEO. "Funeral home and user reaction has been overwhelmingly positive, and we are excited that the LMC partnership will make it even easier for its member newspapers to access this industry leading obituary platform."

The Local Media Consortium represents more than 50 local media companies in top markets across the United States and Puerto Rico covering more than 1,200 individual publications. LMC has an audience footprint of more than 450 monthly million unique visitors (aggregate), and LMC member companies serve more than 4.4 billion monthly page views monthly and more than 156 billion yearly advertising impressions.

"We recognize the importance of the obituary content funeral directors bring to our communities," said Christian A. Hendricks, Chair of the Local Media Consortium's Executive Committee and Vice President, Interactive Media for The McClatchy Company. "These valuable, high-quality platforms allow our membership not only to work more easily with funeral directors both locally and nationally but also to increase the service we provide in informing the public of deaths in their communities."

The Local Media Consortium goes through an extensive, months-long process to choose partner companies, including polling media members about their needs and priorities, and vetting only the highest-quality service providers who have expressed interest in working with the Consortium. Local Media Consortium members are not bound to work exclusively with specific service providers, but the benefit to both members and the service providers is significant. 

About the Local Media Consortium
More information about the Local Media Consortium is available at www.localmediaconsortium.com. Local Media Consortium members are: A.H. Belo, The Bakersfield Californian, Ballantine Communications, BH Media Group, Boston Globe Media Partners, The Buffalo News, Calkins Media, Columbian Publishing Company, Cooke North Carolina Publications, Cox Media Group, The Day Publishing Company, Deseret Digital Media, Digital First Media, The Dispatch Printing Company, Evening Post Industries, Freedom Communications, GateHouse Media, The Gazette Company, Halifax Media Group, Harris Enterprises, Hearst Newspapers, Herald Interactive, KTBS, Lee Enterprises, Maine Today Media, The McClatchy Company, Morris Communications, Newsday, New York Daily News, The Nutting Company, The Oklahoma Publishing Company, Paddock Publications, Paxton Media, Pioneer News Group, Randall Family, Randall Family, Sandusky Newspaper Group, The San Diego Union-Tribune, Schurz Communications Inc., Scripps, The Seattle Times, Shaw Family Holdings, Sonoma Media Investments, Star Tribune Media Company, Swift Communications, Sun-Times Media, Tampa Media Group, Tennessee Valley Printing Company, Times Publishing Company, Times-Shamrock Communications, Trib Total Media, WEHCO Media and Wrapports Productions.

The media outlets represented by the Local Media Consortium include major market daily newspapers and leading local television stations such as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Chicago Sun-Times, The Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, The (Jacksonville) Florida Times-Union, The Kansas City Star, The (Memphis) Commercial Appeal, Miami Herald, Omaha World-Herald, Orange County Register, The Sacramento Bee, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, (Minneapolis) Star Tribune, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Tampa Tribune, WMAR, Channel 2, Baltimore; WXYZ, Channel 7, Detroit; WRTV, Channel 6, Indianapolis; WFTV, Channel 9, Orlando;  KNX-TV, Channel 15, Phoenix; and KIRO-TV Channel 7, Seattle.

For more information, contact:

Rusty Coats, Executive Director
Local Media Consortium
(813) 277-8959
[email protected]

About LEGACY.COM, Inc.
Legacy.com collaborates with more than 1,500 newspapers in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, U.K. and Europe to provide ways for readers to express condolences and share remembrances of loved ones. Legacy.com is headquartered in Evanston, Illinois. The Next Generation Obituary is available nationwide to any newspaper partner who wants to offer it in their market.  For more information on the product, visit http://sales.legacy.com/ngo/ or email [email protected].

For more information contact:

Kim Vander Velde
Legacy.com
847-570-4379
[email protected]

About Memoriams.com
Memoriams.com is a subsidiary of Adpay, Inc., a technology provider of online solutions to the media industry. Adpay's patented solutions deliver print, web and mobile strategies that unify classifieds into a single, dynamic transactional marketplace. The exclusive Memoriams.com network for obituary order entry by funeral directors is the industry's fastest-growing obituary order entry network. Adpay customers include many of the nation's largest media groups including, but not limited to: Advance Digital, Inc., BH Media Co., Black Press, Calkins Media, Cox Media Group, Evening Post Industries, Journal Media, Dispatch Publishing Co., Gannett Co. Inc., Morris Publishing Group, Nexstar Television, Sun-Times Media Group and Swift Communications.

For more information, contact:

Mike Heene
Memoriams.com
303-669-1034
[email protected]

SOURCE Local Media Consortium

Related Links

http://www.localmediaconsortium.com