February 14, 2020But can crossword puzzles really affect a news organization’s bottom line? There’s evidence to suggest the answer is
yes. Publishers have found that the number of active days a reader has on their site is a telling metric for determining whether or not they’ll continue a subscription. Encouraging readers to develop a crossword habit may help. At The Wall Street Journal, for example, a team looking to increase subscribers’ active days found that playing a puzzle had a more dramatic impact on reader retention than other actions the team had been promoting to new subscribers, such as subscribing to an email newsletter or downloading the Journal’s app.