Who is the intended audience for obituaries? Who are you really talking to when you write one? The vast majority of people don't read obituaries on a daily basis, but at their origin they served as the trunk of a social information dissemination tree, so everyone who needed to know would know about the passing and the memorial services.

Reading the obituaries at SFgate, it looks like some sort of DeathBlog. Come to think of it, Craig's List looks like a blog too... Maybe I'm on to something here. Maybe all temporally relevant information sources will eventually settle into the inevitable blog format. (Note that this last one just changed to inverse temporal order yesterday!)

Maybe the obituaries are speaking straight to the future. I've gone to microfiche a few times to access old obituary records, when I knew what I was looking for. Maybe obits will soon go the way of the aforelinked police blotter, serving only as a trace so historians can recreate our present.

If you were found dead tomorrow and only your family was notified, how many of your friends wouldn't find out through that phone tree?

No, no. I'm not being morbid. Just thinking too much about information dissemination.