You win: 'alphaobits' bite the dust

Okay, obituary lovers. You win. In recent weeks, regular readers of death notices let us know in their own kind ways that they did not appreciate changes made last month in The N&O's paid obit listings. "Atrocious," "annoying," "disgusting," "horrible," confusing," "a mess," "a total mess" are some of the printable observations that leapt from my phone last week.

So, The N&O will go back (soon) to the old way of displaying paid death notices. The readers have spoken. The N&O listened. (This time, anyway. Readers might not have such luck in asking the paper to change its editorial philosophy.)

To recap: Last month, The N&O changed the obituary page layout to display paid notices alphabetically. That was intended as a reader service, to make individual notices easier to find. Problem was, alphabetizing necessarily resulted in some obituaries being "broken" from the bottom of one column to the top of the next.

Having encountered some unhappiness with the change, I asked readers in last week's Public Editor column to let us know, by phone or e-mail, whether they preferred an alphabetical or unbroken format.

The envelope please: I received 85 responses. Of those, 77 preferred the old, unbroken format; four liked alphabetical and four were undecided (how can you be undecided on a topic like that?) And that doesn't include the dozens of people who contacted us before my survey.

The N&O may be hard-headed, but it's not hard-hearted. Not only is the paper going back to the old format, it will add a separate alphabetical list of names to show you quickly who has died.

We appreciate the effort of the people who went to the trouble to contact us. In fact, many of the comments were thoughtful, some clever, and I thought you'd like to read them:

• "The positioning of obituaries in alphabetical order is dreadful and very disrespectful to the families of the deceased." --Linda M. O'Connor, Raleigh

• "I read the obituaries every morning, and for the first few mornings I assumed that there had been some horrible goof-up. When I realized after a few days that this was on purpose, I was appalled." -- Lynn Voss, Cary

• "I prefer to read the obituary column without divided notices. At my age I read the column regularly to check for my name to make sure of my status." -- William Ragsdale, Raleigh

• "I really like it alphabetical. That's wonderful. I hope you do keep it that way." -- Mary Lou Smith, Pinehurst

• "I had never realized that they were in fact alphabetized. When you get my age (78), you usually just check the ages to see how many are younger." -- Richard Roberts, Selma

• "When I'm looking at the obituaries, particularly in The N&O, I'm not looking for names. I'm scanning for people I would recognize. Most of the time, I'm just looking for who has died." -- David Harrington, Methodist minister, Farmville

• "We have subscribed to both The N&O and the Herald-Sun for about a year just to see which one to stick with. The N&O was winning. Then the N&O turned the obituary page into the same jumble of broken-up notices that the Herald-Sun has." -- Bodie McCann, Durham

• "Please give me a break! People complained because they don't have time to scour the obituary pages and they have to search for information (it's only a page or two, after all!). Good Grief!" -- Jackie Wynne, Apex

• "It ruined the old joke about the young kid who was reading the paper and, nonchalantly mentions 'I see they're still dying in alphabetical order.'" -- Julie Korzenko, Raleigh

• "I think the only franchise you have in the paper is the obituary pages and local news. About everything else you print in the paper is available somewhere else." -- Martin Green

• "I never realized that a simple cut-and-paste operation was that difficult or would spawn that much concern!" -- Paul Szudzik, Raleigh

• "The world is becoming an angrier, more dangerous, more polarized, more ecologically and economically compromised place, and there is no way we can begin to address those significant problems if everyone is focused on whether or not the obituaries should be alphabetized. No wonder the rest of the world thinks we're spoiled and self-centered." -- Patricia Walker, Raleigh

• "Change your telephone number." -- Dave Maxey, Raleigh.