Both the Newspaper Association of America and the American Society of News Editors are having their annual conferences this coming week.

One topic of interest: death notices and obituaries - are they soon to be lost?

Rich Gordon of Poynter Online writes a great piece lookng at how the death notices and obits may soon go the way of classified ads for newspapers: online.

Where Craigslist stole many of the classified ad dollars from print dailies, the online Legacy.com may soon do the same for news of the dead, Gordon says.

“Lose the death notice business, and newspapers risk losing more than revenue -- they could lose a huge audience driver as well,” Gordon adds. “And while the newspaper industry has been consumed by cost-cutting, bankruptcy proceedings and other challenges, competitive threats in the obituary/death notice space have been accumulating."