I got a call the other day from a journalist in the city who had seen my last column on the changes in the crossword puzzle.
Isn’t it hard for you, he asked, to write about something as small as the crossword puzzle? With all your experience, he asked, wouldn’t you rather be looking out the big-picture window?
I paused momentarily, because he’d made me think, and then answered truthfully. No, I said, no part of the newspaper is uninteresting to me.
Big ideas or small, a newspaper’s job is to get things right for its readers. The crossword puzzle is as important to readers and the paper as the substantive coverage and ethical decisions we make every day.
In this great big overcoat of a newspaper, who am I to say the buttons — a lottery number or the crossword puzzle — are less important than the finely woven cloth?
Besides, one of the chief reasons for this column is to talk to readers about their concerns. It’s also a place to explain the workings of the paper and the constellation known as the news media.
A well-constructed newspaper is made of many parts, and different readers touch different parts of the fabric. They tend to pick up the paper in fairly predictable ways, based on age.
Youngsters, for example, tend to begin reading a paper by diving into the comics and sports. Teens and young adults are attracted to entertainment listings. As readers mature, they tend to get really serious about the paper’s news coverage and editorials, which often become a lifelong habit.
All of which leads me to another topic that may be considered minor, but which has prompted dozens of questions from readers over the last three months — the real-estate transactions.
These lists of home sales run on Sundays in different sections. The Jersey Shore listings are usually printed in the Real Estate section; the Philadelphia listings appear in the New Homes section, and each of the eight Neighbors sections runs real-estate transactions for their counties.
The information is popular with readers who want to know what their neighbor’s house sold for, and possibly the value of their own homes. Readers also like to keep track of housing values in their former neighborhoods. And some organizations, like churches, use the lists to extend a welcome to people new to the neighborhood.
Unfortunately, the listings have largely been absent from the paper since January. Here is why:
For years, a local company called Realist was under contract with The Inquirer to provide the data, gleaned from county records. Late last year, Realist was sold, and that company was sold to First American Real Estate Solutions of Anaheim, Calif.
It took a little time for The Inquirer to negotiate a contract with the new vendor. At the same time, the way the paper received the data files electronically had to be made compatible with the new vendor’s way of sending them. In other words, there have been plenty of computer bugs to work out.
We returned the Jersey Shore listings and the Philadelphia listings to the paper yesterday. We are working diligently to iron out the remaining problems with the other listings.
I can’t tell you when the full run of listings will be back in the paper. But I can assure you that there are no plans to discontinue the lists.
One of the truisms of journalism is that items that are very popular with readers are those that some journalists want to focus on the least. I’m talking about everyday items, such as the lottery numbers, the horoscope, sports agate, the nutrient content of recipes.
But woe to the newspaper that allows any of these to slip or allows mistakes to creep in. This information is as important to the credibility of the newspaper, and its popularity with readers, as the big investigative pieces and the human-interest features that absorb so much of our time and attention.
Of many stones, a palace is built.
