If you didn’t know the Mat-Su Sentinel now publishes obituaries, you’re not alone. You probably didn’t know they cost less than you’d expect either.
A standard obituary starts at $250 in the Anchorage Daily News. It can cost more depending on the package and length.
An obituary at the Mat-Su Sentinel costs $100. A short death notice costs $30.
Amy Bushatz is founder and editor of the Mat-Su Sentinel. She purchased the longtime local newspaper, the Frontiersman in June. Bushatz was researching how the Sentinel would approach obituaries, also called obits, weeks before the sale was final.
“I wanted to run obits on day one,” she said.
It took longer than she expected. The third-party service for obituaries needed a few weeks to transfer the archived obituaries from the Frontiersman to the Sentinel.
Bushatz notes that obituaries have been a reliable source of income for print newspapers. They are a community service first and business second for her.
Publishing obituaries does cost money. The fee helps cover the third-party services that verify a death before the obituary is published.
There are a lot of costs involved in a print paper. Digital news sources cost less to run. This means the Mat-Su Sentinel can publish obituaries. And it can charge less than a traditional newspaper,
The Sentinel charges a flat fee of $100. This includes photos and a generous word count.
The platform at the Frontiersman had bundled the obituaries with a paid Facebook promotion. Bushatz dropped it. She says families should have full autonomy over how, or whether, they publicize a death. They shouldn’t be upsold on extras. This could mean fewer obituaries, which do bring in a small amount of income.
Bushatz stated, “How you honor your loved one’s legacy is completely up to you. You should publish an obituary exactly the way you want to.”
That philosophy is rooted in something more personal than pricing. Bushatz doesn’t remember what she wrote for her grandmother’s obituary over twenty years ago. She only remembers wishing she had known her grandmother better.
Writing the obituary created a bond of its own.
“It was a memorable connection with her that I otherwise would not have had,” she says.
Bushatz has written many obituaries since penning her grandmother’s. She considers an obituary an opportunity to get to know someone. It’s an act that honors a life.
As a journalist, Bushatz mostly writes obituaries about public officials.
She notes that public service is hard. The public figures could do really anything they wanted to, but they decided to do this hard thing instead.
Bushatz is prepared. She keeps a running file of draft obituaries in her back pocket.
She says, “I’m always very impressed by the lives of these people.”
Obituaries and death notices can be submitted via the link at the top menu of the matsusentinel.com. All obituaries published in the former Frontiersman online portal are available.
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That’s it for today and the news on Page Two on Tuesday, August 11, 2026.
image from matsusentinel.com