Puzzle problem is perplexing to all
Our editor, Tim Kelly, has been known to say that we perform a miracle every day. That’s not in any way meant to be sacrilegious or elevate our jobs to the level of people who save, or change, lives as their professional calling.
What that means is, there’s a lot of room for error in what we do.
Every story is filled with details, times, locations, names . . . we print stories filled with numbers, ages, phone numbers, addresses, dollar amounts. And, we work on computers, where one wrong keystroke can spellcheck an oddly spelled name into oblivion. So every day, we do our best to get every detail right, then hand our work to a successive line of other employees who also do their best to get it right and get it to our customers.
It IS a miracle. Sometimes it feels more miraculous than others.
And sometimes it feels like a train wreck.
Friday was one of those days. I was barely in the door of the building when I got the news. We ran Thursday’s crossword and a couple of other puzzles again . . . in Friday’s paper. The message light on my phone was glowing red as I set about checking, noting and responding to the angry readers who missed their puzzles.
As I wrote in a memo to the supervisor of those responsible for the error, “I think copy editors would be surprised to hear the depth of emotion that readers have for our regular features such as the puzzles. I think they need to know when they make mistakes such as these that they not only waste valuable news space and cause our newspaper embarrassment, but they make customers quite unhappy with our product.”
Some callers were nice about their complaint, just wanting to make sure we knew about it. Others threatened cancellation and called our staff members names like “stupid” and “irresponsible.”
I assure you they are neither. They are simply human.
That doesn’t make their error excusable, it just makes it more understandable, and hopefully, forgivable.
Our miracle was less than perfect today. Mea Culpa.
Oh, and for those of you who might have had a Friday night dinner riding on the resolution of Thursday’s Jumble, the answers to the jumbles were: WIPED, MINOR, NOTIFY and CONCUR. The answer to the question was: Naturally, the organizer did this when he got married – FORMED A “UNION.”
What that means is, there’s a lot of room for error in what we do.
Every story is filled with details, times, locations, names . . . we print stories filled with numbers, ages, phone numbers, addresses, dollar amounts. And, we work on computers, where one wrong keystroke can spellcheck an oddly spelled name into oblivion. So every day, we do our best to get every detail right, then hand our work to a successive line of other employees who also do their best to get it right and get it to our customers.
It IS a miracle. Sometimes it feels more miraculous than others.
And sometimes it feels like a train wreck.
Friday was one of those days. I was barely in the door of the building when I got the news. We ran Thursday’s crossword and a couple of other puzzles again . . . in Friday’s paper. The message light on my phone was glowing red as I set about checking, noting and responding to the angry readers who missed their puzzles.
As I wrote in a memo to the supervisor of those responsible for the error, “I think copy editors would be surprised to hear the depth of emotion that readers have for our regular features such as the puzzles. I think they need to know when they make mistakes such as these that they not only waste valuable news space and cause our newspaper embarrassment, but they make customers quite unhappy with our product.”
Some callers were nice about their complaint, just wanting to make sure we knew about it. Others threatened cancellation and called our staff members names like “stupid” and “irresponsible.”
I assure you they are neither. They are simply human.
That doesn’t make their error excusable, it just makes it more understandable, and hopefully, forgivable.
Our miracle was less than perfect today. Mea Culpa.
Oh, and for those of you who might have had a Friday night dinner riding on the resolution of Thursday’s Jumble, the answers to the jumbles were: WIPED, MINOR, NOTIFY and CONCUR. The answer to the question was: Naturally, the organizer did this when he got married – FORMED A “UNION.”
posted by Sheila Friedeck at 1:24 PM
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