Legacy’s new community memorial pages reach 10k local readers

Jul 9, 2021

Evanston Township High School Remembers
Evanston Township High School remembers Alex Richardson

Recently, Legacy announced its new high school memorial pages and the potential to connect your readers with more obituaries that matter to them.

We have an exciting update to share. Since the program launched with a handful of sites, 10,000 local readers have discovered newspaper partner obituaries for former classmates, teachers, and administrators.

With less than 115 high schools in the initial test group, this instant volume of interest confirms what we’ve long suspected: Your readers are looking for places to remember people they’ve lost beyond the traditional daily news cycle. Providing them with an obituary gathering place based on specific local interests puts your readers into a nexus of content to discover, one that extends the lifecycle of your obituaries long after they’ve dropped off your list of recent notices.

“Everyone has a moment when they wonder: Whatever happened to my high school coach?” says Ernie Roth, general manager of channel partnerships at Legacy.com. “Only an experienced partner like Legacy can leverage that interest with the kind of scale that will drive meaningful traffic and engagement for newspapers and help them stay relevant with their digital audience.”
Based on these results, Legacy is escalating our expansion timetable. By the end of July, 3,850 new local high schools will join the current test group, and up to 2,150  scheduled to follow this summer. With more community hubs ready for imminent launch, the program is expected to grow exponentially by fall. Stay tuned!