Who moved my puzzles?

Merc, I’m so glad to hear about the process. Some things I’d like to suggest:

1. Less bias in news stories. I’m a flaming liberal, but even so, I don’t want to hear bias when I read the news–save it for the editorial pages. I’ve noticed that when you do stories on sensitive issues, you tend to only show the perspective of one side (often the left) without showing the other side of the issue.

2. More coverage of the LGBT community in your human interest stories. We have a large Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgendered community here in the South Bay, but you’d never know it by reading the Merc. I see a story on the community perhaps once a year when the Gay Pride parade rolls around. I’d look to the San Francisco Chronicle as an example–they have an LGBT blog and regular stories on this community. Please give them as much attention as you do to, say, stories on illegal immigration.

3. A more sophisticated approach to the Style and Food sections. As you know, San Jose citizens earn more on average compared to others in the country. Our Style and Food sections should reflect this. While I appreciate the cheap chic fashion recommendations in the Style section, and reviews of hole-in-the-walls in the food section, it’d be nice to see things that appeal to our high-income demographic. Showcase some of the great boutiques at Santana Row. Highlight some of the things the kitchens at Arcadia and Parcel 104 are turning out (arguably two of the best restaurants in the area that surprisingly, many people in the area don’t know about).

In conclusion, I’d just like to see a newspaper that reflects its highly-educated, sophisticated, and cosmopolitan audience. You guys can be just as great as the New York Times!

Where is Marilyn VosSavant when you need her? She’s good at problem solving. Oh, yeah…she got dumped with Parade..
I don’t care for the Parade substitute you are using and really miss Marilyn. Thought I was alone until my book group friends were making similar comments..
Otherwise your paper is relavant for my husband and I…

Who cares where the puzzles are? I was initially dismayed when they were moved from comics to the last page of classified, but by the next day, OK, fine.

Before deciding what to do about the puzzles, first determine what their core constituency is. I suspect that the most typical fan of the puzzles is a casual puzzle solver. I do them in the morning while I drink coffee and spend about 30 minutes doing so. If you added more puzzles (or a puzzle section), you’re really only serving folks who want to do MORE PUZZLES, and they’re probably already getting them off the net or in separate books. So, my opinion is the the current space devoted to puzzles is about right.

Regarding overall rethinking:

1. Don’t try to use print media to compete with the Internet; that’s always going to be a losing battle.

2. Don’t cling to conventional ideas as to how a newspaper should look or work. The current model of a front page with a few stories followed by less prominent stories on following pages is oriented to a news consumer that doesn’t really exist anymore. Particularly in the San Jose area, news consumers (when reading other news media) scan many stories looking for the few in which they are interested for deeper comprehension.

2a. Front page: Put a number of complete stories on the front page so that reading it gives a basic overview of the most important stories.

2b. Next few pages: Summarize the most prominent stories in synopsis form, perhaps as many as 20-30 on a page. Reading these accounts provides the basic gist of a story and yields enough information to find more comprehensive coverage online.

2c. Remainder of new section: more in-depth coverage of various stories, more for the descriptions and writing than for just the basic information. Anyone can browse the news almost anywhere, the newspaper should be a pleasurable exercise in reading.

3. Bring back more book reviews and other content targeted to people who actually read, who tend to

4. Publish original non-fiction prose on various topics, but don’t provide it as free content on any website. Good writing always entertains, regardless of the topic.

5. Transform the newspaper from the lowest common denominator of news coverage into a source of daily pleasure reading.

6. Up the “grade level” of the writing considerably. What is it now, about 6th grade comprehension required to read the newspaper?

And who cut my comics?

Thanks Mercury News. Thanks a bunch.
Thanks for springing these wonderful surprises on us all the time.
Thanks for helping me start my mornings with a little more frustration the past few weeks.
I think I’ve had it with these changes! Can we at least have a vote the next time big changes occur?

I woke up this morning feeling quite disoriented when I discovered that the Sunday comics were all in the wrong place. Not only that, but half the comics were gone! And finally.. the bomb. Perhaps the two most silicon valley relevant comics were cut… Foxtrot and Adam@Home. Mercury has definitely lost touch with its readers. When you decided to choose comics that reflect “the valley’s interest in technology” which comics did you think fit into that description? The bigger question is… who convinced you that readers will appreciate paying the same amount of money for a newspaper that keeps cutting back its offerings every couple of weeks? It just does not make sense.

At least when you make cuts, ASK the READERS wheat they want. Those research groups that you are using don’t know what we want. Wouldn’t it be more accurate and cost efficient to have online polls where readers can vote on the changes that are being proposed? I thought we were making changes to attract more readers?

If you ask me, the comics and puzzles section is one of the only sections that cannot be adequately replaced by the web, and is the one thing that in my opinion used to make the Mercury News stand out from other newspapers. No other newspaper in the bay area offers as many comics choices as the mercury news. But with these cuts… and all these changes that just don’t seem to make sense… I’m starting to think I might want to change to something else myself.

Ok, now you’ve messed with my Sunday comics. Sacrilege!

This morning I was disappointed to find the Sunday comics section cut down to four pages.

Along with that was some insert with the lame excuse of cutting printing costs, since the newspaper industry is going through a transformation. I presume you’re talking about the Internet, of course.

So, what you’re saying is, since you’re getting competition from online sources, I should go online to get content like comics, rather than expecting it from the newspaper? So what do I need you guys for, exactly?

Further, I actually tried using the links to some of the comics you removed, like Opus. That goes to a third -party site which has a small image of last week’s strip. One of the things I like about the newspaper is that it’s tactile, and I don’t have to squint to read small images.

Congratulations, you’re making the demise of your paper a self fulfilling prophesy.

Regards, Rich Newton

You should’nt mess with the comics. Opus is my morning sanity check. Also, when you encourage readers to look on-line for something like a comic strip, you are going down a slippery slope. You are leading your readers to read the whole paper- or someone else’s on line.

I have loved reading the comics in the Mercury for a very long time now. But the constant changes, reducing the selection on Sunday, and the poor comics now in your pages mean I am seriously consider looking elsewhere. As long as your actions are making me want to look to the internet for comics, I certainly will not be giving your website my traffic.

Cheap! Stupid! Short Sighted!

That’s what I think of your decision to cut back on the Sunday Comics.

Sunday comics are a vibrant art form and an American Tradition. They are one of the highlights of my Sunday morning. They help offset the effort required to dig through the pounds of advertising (talk about wasted paper).

Even more ridiculous is your attempt to frame this cheesy cost cutting measure as driven by environmental concerns. (“We will reduce our paper consumption by cutting the color comics from six pages to four”) What total BS. You want to save paper? Did we really need a 2/3 page picture of a man with knife & fork to illustrate the article on venture funding, or the 3/4 page picture of the Chicago skyline on the front of the travel section, or the huge picture of the Cirque performers on the lifestyle section? (Oh I forgot, the Cirque is a big advertiser).

Do you really think your readers are that stupid? (apparently so). Cutting the comics back is just another example of what happens when an excellent local paper is sold to out of town investors. And you wonder why readership is down.

Kenneth Koll
Aptos , CA
25+ year subscriber to the Mercury News

One of the reasons I put up with the Mercury News and its poor treatment of individuals like Colleen Wilcox was the consistency of being able to find the comics I have loved for years. But today was different: Foxtrot, Adam@home were missing as was Rex Morgan. This is one of the main reasons I subscribed to the Merc. I want to open the paper and read my comics. In place of the comics previously named were several recent additions. Who determines which comics remained? Thanks for assuming we all want to hear tech news/ humor constantly. You know what happens when one assumes?

“Secret Asian Men” (who found this loser?) , “Baldo”, “Get Fuzzy”, “Brewster Rocket”, “Pearls before Swine” and “Rhymes with Orange” get Sunday space? “Mallard Filmore” (Victor Davis Hanson for the reading impaired) doesn’t make the cut? Finally, a polite request for the return of “Rex Morgan”, “Foxtrot”, “Jump Start” and “Opus” on Sunday.

I was believing your lame cost saving story till I stumbled on the ad for MYCOMICSPAGE.COM (” It’s just $11.95 a year!”) buried in one of the online strips.

[…] here for […]

Bring back Opus to the Sunday comics. I won’t go online to read it even though Opus is extremely clever.
I’ve subscribed for 44 years. The paper is now almost as small as a community paper..nothing much of interest. We need more columnists with thoughtful articles to expand the brief information we get on TV or the internet. More in-depth investigative articles, please. Also, if information appears in a wire service, don’t wait 2 days before you print it in the paper. You always seem to have a time lag compared to the other US papers I read when I travel the country. (And they have 2 crossword puzzles that are easy to find!)
I read a paper for information and for the enlightenment of interesting ideas. I can take 3 very pleasurable hours to read the International Herald Tribune; your paper I read in 20 minutes. I’ll probably keep subscribing because my husband likes to wake up with the daily sudoku, but I might have to subscribe to something more substantial to keep my mind alive.

This morning, for the first time, I can truly say there was nothing in the Sunday paper of interest to me. The final straw was the loss of “Opus.”

Does that sound trite? I get news online from dozens of sources throughout the day. I read the Wall Street Journal print edition Monday through Saturday. The New Yorker is consumed cover to cover. Last night, I watched a DVD documentary on Iraq. When I shuffled out the front door in my bathrobe and slippers this morning, I expected to return with a hefty edition of the Sunday paper assembled through smart judgments from seasoned editors that included in-depth reporting of current national and international news, basic reporting of local news, thoughtful commentary and opinions, perspective and context on issues and on-going news stories, well-written columns and engaging and entertaining comics.

Instead, I now realize you have reduced content and quality in almost every section of your paper. It has been a slow decline. It took the sudden loss of Opus and my other Sunday comics favorites to finally break me of my Mercury News habit.

Thank you for your attention.

I sent a copy of my earlier post to Berkeley Breathed. Here is his reply:

Got your letter. Grateful thanks for your support. Newspapers are going to their goodnight, I fear, and hence, retreating to the comfort of the banal and boring. Good that we make noise as they do this.

Best,

Berkeley Breathed

I just came back from a trip abroad and discovered my favorite strips are gone.

Why did you remove Opus, Foxtrot, and Adam@Home and kept the coma-inducing strips such as Garfield, For Better or Worse, Doonsbury, Cathy, and the new mindless drivel–Secret Asian Man?? Please dump those awful strips.

I know a newspaper can only do so much but reducing most of the Sunday comics to four pages (if we’re lucky) and converting the other pages into detestable ads is pushing it. Before this week, my husband and I would walk down to the local 7-11, purchase decaf coffee and a Sunday Mercury Newspaper. Now, that’s no longer the case. Unless we get our Opus and other pals back.

Thanks!