Something historically dreadful happened in the New York Times a couple of weeks back. The Crossword was impossible to solve because the clue to Five Across was missing.
Any normal reasonable person reading the news would realise that anyone seriously complaining about this needs to re-evaluate their priorities. These people have never worked in a newsroom of a paper which published a crossword error ... repeated puzzle, wrong answers. Anything really. The phone would ring all day from punters determined to cancel their subscriptions.
While the high paid editors fiercely debated how graphic a photo could be on the front page or just how much detail was appropriate in a court story, the most junior cadet wold be across the room fiddling with the page containing the cross word, comics, stars, tide times, shipping news and other things people relied on a newspaper for in the pre internet world. If now I want to know where this container ship was heading there's a website for that. Once I needed a newspaper.
It really gives you a sense of perspective. And now let me pull back the curtain and reveal what actually happened when the bigwigs took their eyes off the important business of those pages. A junior staff member changed the horoscopes relating to both her star sign and that of someone she was crushing on. It sounds like the plot of a bad Rom Com but it happened. Add "be nice to someone wearing blue" then turn up in blue. Brilliant. Not one phone call from anyone complaining their horoscope got it wrong.
Another fun fact. We would often get complaints about front page images relating to fatal car crashes or acts of violence. Circulation would also increase on those days. What people want and what they say they want are not the same thing ... except when it comes to the crossword
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