A lot of readers of the Daily Times must have been wondering if they were living in their very own version of 'Groundhog Day' on Wednesday.
You know what happens in the classic Bill Murray movie. He's a weatherman sent to Punxsutawney to cover the festivities - which of course just happened to take place earlier this week - and he winds up repeating the same day again and again.
Well, we unwittingly did that to our loyal readers on Wednesday.
Specifically, we managed to run two of the exact same comics pages as we had on Tuesday. Same goes for the TV page.
That should not happen, but it did. Obviously it was a production error, and the wrong pages got sent to our printer.
If you're going to make this kind of mistake, here's a hint. Try not to do it on the comics pages.
Yesterday, I did not have that luxury. We did it on the pages where we run our daily Crossword puzzle, along with the Celebrity Cipher and Sudoku, along with the Bridge column and several comic strips.
I have said it many times. It is one of the axioms of this business. "Don't mess with the comics pages."
What ensued was an avalanche of phone calls from readers.
It's actually a fairly enlightening experience. Some wanted to castigate us. I listened to every one of them.
But what I learned most - again - is the deep connection this newspaper has with its audience. It is a crucial part of their daily experience. And, of course, they dearly love their crossword and comics.
The one thing I did not expect is how nice most of the callers were. Many of them actually felt bad for me, and just wanted to alert me to the problem.
I apologized for the aggravation we caused them, in particular not being able to deliver their daily dose of fund and wordsmithing.
We ran the correct two pages for yesterday in today's paper, in addition to the normal daily comics pages. When I told the readers who called yesterday that was our plan, most were relieved.
And when I got in the office this morning, there was a voice mail from one more reader. His daily schedule is a bit different. He reads the paper in the morning, but doesn't get to the puzzles until he sits down at night.
"Here is is 9 o'clock and I don't have any crossword to do," he said.
Sorry about that. I pledge to make sure that does not happen again.
But in a business that is convulsing with change, it's nice to know some things remain the same.
Our readers love their Daily Times.
That makes two of us.
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