NewsBeat

September 2022 NewsBeat 20 NewsBeat A NEWSLETTER FOR NEW YORK'S COMMUNITY NEWSPAPERS Published by the New York Press Association 621 Columbia Street Extension, Suite 100, Cohoes, NY 12047 518.464.6483 • 518.464.6489 fax • www.nynewspapers.com Executive Editor — Michelle K. Rea Layout & Design — Rich Hotaling PA NY Display Advertising Sizes and Standard Box 4.5"w x 3.25"h $300 Horizontal 9.25"w x 3.25"h $500 Vertical 4.5"w x 10.25"h $750 Full Page 9.25"w x 10.25"h $1,000 By LUKE WINKIE T he first crossword puzzle ever constructed ran in the December 21, 1913 edition of The New York World. It's under the "Fun" section, and contains some hilariously outmoded Wood- row Wilson-era aphorisms. (For instance, a clue reading "The fiber of the gomuti palm" was answered with "Doh.") The basic appeal of a games page was the same then as it is now: Newspapers needed to broaden their utilitarian appeal beyond those interested in reading the dai- ly tragedies and triumphs of their city and their nation. So, hidden in the depths be- neath the front page, we could find baseball box scores, Peanuts panels, and, of course, a cornucopia of Sudoku, crosswords, and word searches. At last, people who were not interested in reading the news had a reason to purchase a newspaper, and that has remained the core business ambition of the media industry for as long as it has existed. We are still lingering under the shadow of that fateful morning edition. For the last century, and especially over the past 20 years, publishing executives have done everything they can to scale beyond the meager business of reporting. Startups like BuzzFeed and Vox spearheaded the Face- book video feeding frenzy, which turned out to be a terrible decision. ESPN built restaurants in Orlando and Times Square, until customers made it clear that they did not want Ron Jaworski following them outside of the house. Playboy has ditched its editorial operation entirely, and today the URL redirects to an apparel site selling tie-dyed shirts emblazoned with the bunny logo. (You can pick up some NFTs while you're there.) These are the gambles of an industry that has been slowly eroded by cyberspace. The inborn precarity of digital media has forced everyone to entertain a few ques- tionable business models — often burdened with a ridiculously short shelf life. But the solution currently in vogue is delightfully antique. Everywhere you look, newspapers, magazines, and websites are ramping up their games section. In January, Vulture introduced its own crossword, "Vulture 10×10," which is designed to be solved over the course of a coffee break. The New York Times famously purchased Wordle at the beginning of the year, and continues to make additions to its overflowing back- pages. (The latest addition? Chess puzzles.) The New Yorker, meanwhile, has retrofit- ted its crossword to be a recurring daily feature, and rolled out a pop trivia game, "Name Drop," last summer. There is no shortage of news in 2022. None of these initiatives are compensat- ing for a dry period in political agitation, international catastrophe, or really, any of the stuff that could compel a customer to read some articles. Instead, it feels as if the opposite is true. As reporters continue to file stories from the frontlines of the great American crackup, as more Covid variants bubble to the surface, as the world contin- ues to unspool at an alarming rate, media managers seem to have come to a humbling realization: Some subscribers would rather game than sift through the wreckage. Can you blame them? "The first [New York Times] crossword puzzle ran in 1942, not long after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The tradition of putting games into the paper as a di- version [has been around] from the tough news cycles of the 1940s to the tough news cycles of today," Jonathan Knight, the man who has been in charge of the Times' entire games operation since 2020, told me. "When news went digital, we focused more on the news, but now we're getting back to that Sunday paper experience." Knight took an unorthodox path into newspapers. Before he came to the Times, he was a vice president at Zynga — the company responsible for some of the most profitably addictive games ever made (Farmville, Words With Friends, and so on). That DNA is all over the Times' game section, which today resembles a suite of tasteful, scholastic brain teasers with a guiding hand behind the screen tracking one's glacial progress like a string of Call of Opinion: Why news outlets are getting into games

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