Unjumble this: dreenyipsit

You know about the man who checks the obits every morning to see if he’s there.
I work the Jumble word puzzle to see if my mind is all there.
My wife does the same with the crossword puzzle.
Our grown children tackle sudoku.
There’s the lady whose day just isn’t right until she checks her horoscope and the man who looks for the daily comic he has read ever since he was a little boy.
We’re all hooked on the benign narcotic of the syndicated feature. Newspapers set out to make us return customers. And darned if newsprint is not a lifestyle for some of us.
Journalists are so-o-o-o serious. Their products are news, sports, features, editorials, business coverage and all the rest in life that’s more or less momentous.
Many of them don’t know we really want to read the used truck ads in the classifieds. Or find out the weather in Bangkok. Or check the TV listings.
My local paper ran a gazpacho recipe this morning. Perfect. Now my household knows what to do with the surplus of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers from our garden.
Papers everywhere run food sections one day a week – usually Wednesdays – to wrap around the grocery ads with their coupons and twofer come-on sales. And those are part of the information industry too.
Publishers put out a package, not just coverage of breaking events. Many still provide yesterday’s stock listings, although any investor can check the markets instantly online.
Try to stop a syndicated feature like that and watch the switchboard light up with angry calls from us in the newspaper habit. Don’t even move a feature from its usual spot.
An organizational mind is a measure of good papers. Alter not their internal order.
Serendipity also is a hallmark, though. We wonder what the letter writers are up to today, what the movie critic says, what fantastic hand the bridge column is about. Finding the answers is a random walk through a land of happy discoveries made by happenstance.
You may think or wish this marriage of opposites – an ordered plan wedded to chance delight – is exclusive to newspapers and would keep the competing Internet at bay.
Nope. The World Wide Web is just a many times larger collection of oddities and curiosities and fun features to divert us from its serious content updated instantly. If you think it lacks order, you haven’t put links, feeds, widgets, blog readers and all the other gadgets together on your familiar home page.
There is simultaneous organization and serendipity to a good Web site just like a good newspaper. That’s why online journalism can succeed once the economic model is in place. We habitués can make the move.
Those of us who are grumpy if we don’t work the Jumble every morning now aren’t able to settle into the day’s routine without checking our email.
And when we manage our own homepage, we don’t have to worry that some editor left our favorite feature out that day.
I blog, therefore I am – without having to check the obit page.