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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. ....
The New Yorker published its first issue in 1925, amid what the writer Adrienne Raphel has described as a nationwide “crossword craze.” But more than seventy years passed before the magazine introduced a crossword puzzle a British-style cryptic crossword, which was gone before the twenty-first century arrived. Two decades later, the Puzzles & Games Dept. was born online. On the fewoccasions when these newcrosswords ran in print, the response was warm. “It is a special treat to be able to use a pen,” Barbara, from Colorado, wrote in to tell us; “I really enjoy the hard copy version,” Lauryl, from Massachusetts, enthused. Frostier were the letters when the puzzle didn’t return: “Why is there no crossword puzzle in the print magazine?? I’m very disappointed,” wrote Carla, from (where else?) New York. ....