Jumble fever

The number of calls and emails we’ve received today regarding the absence of the Jumble in today’s paper probably number in the hundreds. The bad news is, the ommission was deliberate, but the good news is, the Jumble will be back.

Here’s what happened: The syndicate that provided the feature to us, decided rather abruptly a week or so ago to stop carrying it, and unable to find an alternative source, features editor Pia Hansen opted to drop it. Amid the uproar, Hansen looked more closely and discovered that one of our other syndicate services does carry the Jumble, and we’ll resume publication tomorrow.

Oh, and we also redesigned the whole newspaper

What we haven’t heard this morning is complaints about the newly redesigned Spokesman-Review. There was some talk on the Mark Fuhrman show about it this morning, including a complaint from Fuhrman himself that we “never” have Iraq news in the paper.

There were some issues with the press run - some readers reported “bleedthrough” (when wet ink from one page blots onto another, making the page unreadable) and other legibility issues. These problems, we hope, will be ironed out over time.

We’ll make a couple of minor changes, such as changing the type on the briefs column to the same face used on stories (right now, it’s a difficult-to-read sans serif face). We welcome comments on the paper’s new look at editorforum@spokesman.com . or (509) 744-5650.