Few subjects that I’ve written about have brought more responses than the piece a few months ago about the death notice for a rabbit named Pearl Grover that made it through our filters and was published.
Some people were offended, yes, but many said they hoped we would find a way to include tributes to departed pets on our platforms. Some suggested pet tributes could be a new revenue source.
We agree. Our chief revenue officer, David Knight, is preparing to unveil a pet tribute program soon, but before we launch it, we want to give you a one-time chance to get your tribute published for free.
Here’s the deal. You have from now until 5 p.m. Friday, May 13, to submit a tribute of up to 500 words to a pet you have lost. Dogs. Cats, Rabbits. Birds, Lizards. Tarantulas. Any kind of pet. As I said in the original piece, we know well in our newsroom the relationships people have with their pets, and many find catharsis in writing about them.
Tell a story about how you met your pet. Or write about the habits that so endeared them to you. Whatever moves you. And then we will publish them, probably one at a time, on cleveland.com. Depending on how many we receive, we’ll aim to publish at least some in The Plain Dealer, too.
We’re doing this for a couple of reasons. The outpouring from people who want to do it moved us. We figure that if you’ve lost a pet in recent years, you might want to give this a go. (With the coming paid notices, we expect we’ll get more recent pet deaths.)
We also want to assess interest. Yes, a lot of people told us they want to write or read these, and the column on the rabbit death notice went quite viral, but we have no idea how many people will take the time to write tributes to their departed companions.
We also want to know how many people will read these and whether they might be willing to subscribe to read them. We’ll publish a bunch for anyone to read, and we’ll mark some for subscribers only.
How do you do it? We’ve put together a form to collect the needed information from you. You can find it here: https://tinyurl.com/tributetopets
We will want to verify the tributes come from the listed authors, as we can envision some pranksters attempting to pull a fast one on us. And the field where you paste your tribute has a 500-word limit built into it.
We imagine many will want to send a photo, as well. You can do that through the form. Please, though, provide only photos that you took or you have permission to publish. No professional photos will be accepted due to copyright laws. Please tell us who took the photo (for photo credit purposes) and send written permission with your submission. If you did not take the photo, please tell is who did and how we can contact them for permission to publish the photo.
I look forward to reading what you write.
Thanks for reading.
