It’s all about alternative revenue.

Newspapers, large and small, have served for generations as a gateway for providing information about the deaths of loved ones.

Without any real numbers to back this up, it sure seems that unlike things like job listings and other classifieds, obit profits haven’t been eaten away nearly as much.

When I look at highly targeted community Web sites — successful ones like Howard Owens’s The Batvian and My Missourian (read about if they are sustainable) — I don’t see them trying to do the same. Any site that has any meaningful geographic focus and critical mass of readership there needs to see this as an important monetization strategy.

It’s a service I actually would pay for. The hometown newspaper with which I grew up, the New Jersey Herald (a paper I think is making nice changes), charges a $15 fee and $15 per each two column inches — a bit tighter at 20-25 words per inch. It’s a cost I see valuable when dealing with a small community, as Sussex County is and the Herald covers. It’s an opportunity to let neighbors, friends and those not quite either to know about a lost loved one.

It’s another case for geographic specificity: towns, small regions or neighborhoods. So why aren’t more smaller niche Web sites entering that market? –Are they?

Even as a fan of the journalism from big city newspapers, I don’t think it pays to put an obit in a large-circ paper, where the eyeballs are leaving and the page is already crowded. So, give me a smaller paper and, even increasingly so, give  me the enternity of the Internet. A community news site that collects that meaningful readership from that narrow community can charge me, I think, a similar price to a newspaper — please don’t undercut the revenue model! — because I could include photo slide shows, video and all the pertinent text.

Of course the thought of this comes at a rotten time. I had to put an obituary in a couple papers — a lengthier one I wrote for the Herald and a death notice in Newsday — for my mother. It made me realize the impermanence, how I was happy to put it in the Herald, where I knew it would be seen, but it wouldn’t stay.

For now, it’s available on the funeral parlor Web site and on the Herald’s site for now, but niche community sites for small towns or city neighborhoods could offer a real service and make a genuine profit. Ya think?

NEWTON — Carol Wink, 51, died on Wednesday, June 17th at Morristown Memorial Hospital after complications related to a long fought illness.

The beloved wife, mother, sister and aunt was born in the Harding Park neighborhood of the Bronx on Sept. 1, 1957 to William and Geraldine (Howell) Dolan. After growing up in Plainview, Long Island, she moved with her family in 1986 to Sussex County, a rural paradise she came to love. She worked for 18 years as a devoted educator, teaching first and second grade and then reading comprehension at the Sparta Alpine School, where she was named Teacher of the Year in 2001.

Carol is survived by her loving husband, George, with whom she was two months shy of a 30th wedding anniversary; her daughter, Maureen; her son, Christopher; two loving sisters, Eileen and Nancy, and their husbands, Mike Lorio and Joe Cipollone; their children, Daniel and Cassie and Joseph and Matthew; two cherished sisters-in-law, Jeanie and Linda Wink; a strange looking dog and two cats, including her favorite, Milo.

Aside from education, her greatest passions came in the kitchen, using a library of cook books and a knack for experimentation and exploration to craft meals of exceptional regard that will be greatly missed by all, especially her eternally hungry son. The green thumb gardener was known for coaxing her husband into playing with dirt, mulch and plants on big, beautiful Sussex County weekends, as well as incorporating the fruits and vegetables she grew into her favorite meals. She will be remembered best for her passion, humor and eggplant rollatini.

Last August, she was thrilled to make her first trip across the pond, spending a week in London. She recently turned over her constant reading habits to planning a trip to California, showing her love for travel.

She is a 1979 Bachelor’s of Arts graduate from Hofstra University with a Master in the Art of Teaching from Marygrove College and other post-graduate work from Centenary College of New Jersey. She was excited to return to the classroom this fall to use a recently completed Orton Gillingham Teacher Certificate from Farleigh Dickinson University to tutor students suffering with Dyslexia and other reading difficulties.

In September 2005, she was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, which she battled courageously, including a period of time during which she taught full-time and received regular chemotherapy treatments. Her weakened immune system left her unable to beat a lung inflammation that came in her final weeks.

Funeral services will be held 11 a.m. on Tuesday at the Smith-McCracken Funeral Home, 63 High Street, Newton. Interment will be held at Newton Cemetery. Visitation will be held on Monday from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m. at the funeral home. The family asks that in lieu of flowers, memorial donations be made to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, North Jersey Chapter, 14 Commerce Drive, Suite 301, Cranford, NJ 07016.