At the end of the year, the USA Today newspaper will discontinue its failed quarter century-long trial run of reporting the news. Deliberations about its core mission have led to plans to revert back to its original format of crosswords, assortments of puzzles and word games, and ads touting work-from-home scams.
The daily publication began circulation in 1889 as the The Nation’s Crossword Paper of Note – No.1 in the USA and its Territories. Renown for its near omni-presence in train and carriage stations and offered for free in travel inns throughout America , the USA Today kept weary travelers occupied on their 3-day trips from Chicago to St Louis with its word games and mind-benders.
But some things have never changed. Even over a 100 years ago, the various spellings of the name for a Russian ruler (tsar, tzar, csar and czar) still frustrated its enthusiasts. However, readers had twice the trouble at least throughout the first part of the 20th century as the Bulgarians also used the term for its leadership during that time.
Today we also have our Sudoku, a Japanese influence that would have never been tolerated at the time. However, before the turn of the century, readers instead enjoyed a game called “Classify”. In this popular word game the reader was asked to name as many stereotypes for various racial or religious minorities that came to mind before they arrived at the next station stop.
Another game popular with women and minority travelers was called If You Could Vote and asked the reader to identify, from a jumbled mass of letters and word phrases, the rights and privileges they would choose to exercise were they white males.
But in 1982, the paper bucked convention and threw out its long tradition of publishing puzzles and then offering their solutions the very next day. It shocked the puzzle paper world when it added easy-to-read-and-comprehend stories on topics such as News, Sports, Money, and the ever-presumptuous Life. That move is now seen as one of the largest blunders in the history of the publishing world.
Now with stagnant ad revenue and shrinking circulation, the paper felt it too difficult to maintain content that had nothing at all to do with crosswords and will stop printing entire sections of news that was too insufficiently covered to be any use anyway.
Gone will be the colorful pictures and graphic representations of irrelevant data that surreptitiously and ultimately led readers to the crossword page anyway.
“At the end of the day, that’s where people always ended up,” said USA Today editor John Hillkirk. “They discard the other sections almost immediately after retrieving the paper from outside their hotel room, or after picking it up off a table at Starbucks, or from an unattended seat at the airport terminal. If we don’t publish DeWayne Wikkam’s opinion pieces, or our large colorfully inaccurate weather map, or the weekly College Football Sagarin ratings, no one will notice and we’ll end up saving millions.”
Starting in January , the USA Today –priced at a $1.00—will come back to its roots. Cut to a single piece of paper at one-fourth its previous size, it will showcase its beloved crossword puzzle on the front page. Along the top will run Craigslist-type ads about being your own boss and your need for erectile dysfunction relief. On the back will be the Soduko puzzle but balanced with an ample number of other simple word games intended allow the reader to regain their sense of worth after being unable to finish the more difficult puzzles.
JB Goodbody frequently has thoughts in his head that makes him smile. Were they made public at the moment they poofed into existence, without some form of structured outlet such as satire, these thoughts would cause significant distress among his friends, family and coworkers. This is why he is here. 
