That’s a question I’ve heard many times over the past 13 years and, looking back, I never really had a solid answer to offer in response.
It’s also a question we gave some serious attention to at a recent staff meeting, spurred on by a session I attended during the 2019 Arizona Newspaper Association fall convention.
That session was hosted by Kevin Slimp, also known as “The News Guru.” This guy travels all over the country to work with newsrooms and help papers improve their relationship with readers.
He works with dozens upon dozens of publications so, when he offers advice, you know it’s coming from plenty of experience.
Slimp started off his presentation by saying he was going to share with the room the one piece of advice he would offer any newspaper: Get a crossword puzzle.
That got a soft chuckle out of me because, in all honesty, it wasn’t what I expected. His major piece of advice was not, “make sure the quality of writing is high,” or “people love to see nice, big photos, and plenty of them.” He didn’t start off discussing the importance of building trust with your readership or anything like that.
Sure, we eventually discussed those topics, but here was the News Guru leading with, “get a crossword puzzle.”
In the weeks that followed, Slimp’s suggestion kept replaying in my mind, leading me to finally ask myself, “Waitaminute! Why DON’T we have a crossword puzzle?”
I finally posed that question to the staff, and company President Alan Cruikshank had the answer. Space comes at a premium in a newspaper and we frequently find ourselves pinched trying to fit all of the news into a given issue. We can’t just “add a page,” as doing so comes at a cost that must be considered. That being the case, Alan said we’ve always held that as much fun as a crossword puzzle might be, we didn’t like the idea of cutting another hole out of the actual news. Makes perfect sense.
Still, we all kicked the idea around the staff meeting for a bit and, in the end; we decided that we should, at long last, get ourselves a crossword puzzle. If readers have been asking for it over the years and we’ve got a paid professional telling us it’s his top recommendation, we’d be just about crazy not to at least give a crossword puzzle an honest effort.
And so, just in time for you to share with the family this Thanksgiving holiday, we’re running our very first crossword puzzle. We plan to run it each week in the B section, though its location is subject to float around a bit. The answers can be found on the Spouts page, just in case you need a helpful nudge working your way through a difficult solution.
We’re genuinely excited to finally offer a crossword puzzle and hope you get plenty of enjoyment out of this latest addition to your hometown paper. So when you’re ready, be sure to grab a pencil and get to work.
