And others thanked me for not ditching the new puzzle from the New York Times. I appreciate the feedback, and I’m glad everyone is satisfied with the outcome.

So let me talk a little bit about our social media guidelines as a newsroom, and mine individually.

Earlier this week, the newsroom staff had a great lunchtime discussion about how our personal and professional lives intersect on social media networks. We updated the newsroom’s ethics policy over the summer and added a social media section for the first time, and one thing is already clear — it needs to be more specific to give our staff more guidance in how to use networks like Facebook, Twitter or MySpace without compromising our credibility as a journalists (and, by extension, The Eagle’s).

Earlier this month, Mashable.com quoted a study in which more than half of employers surveyed block social media sites on work computers. At The Eagle, I believe that connecting to these networks, especially within our community, is an increasingly important part of our job. I encourage our staff to be engaged in digital community conversations as part of their job. And to do it with the same sound ethical guidelines we’ve adhered to in the print business for many decades.

The use of social media is evolving so rapidly, though, that stories are abundant of people who have harmed their careers and their employers’ reputations by exercising poor judgment in Tweets, blog posts or Facebook updates. Being a news organization just adds an extra few layers of complication, and we don’t yet have all the answers on how to handle every situation that can arise. Our guidelines and practices will change as we make mistakes, or discover ethical dilemmas we hadn’t anticipated.

In our discussion last week, I told our staff that I won’t issue rules on who they should or should not invite or accept as Facebook friends. Common sense should guide decisions for journalists who use Facebook as a mix of personal friends/family and professional connections. It’s common for journalists to have professional acquaintances connected to them on Facebook. I view it as a great compliment to our staff that readers and sources in the community want to have connections to our staff on social networks — they see our writers, editors, visual journalists, etc., as approachable, or they wouldn’t want to connect to them.

Some of us are, frankly, unsure how far to go in opening the doors of our Facebook pages. We’re figuring it out as we go, and, at least for me, practices change over time as use of the social network grows. It’s not that there are hoards of people banging at my Facebook door by any means. And I don’t have earth-shattering posts on my Facebook page (and I don’t update it often enough — I’m working on it). But I do have family members there, and my vacation photos, and conversations with close friends.

So a month or two ago I decided that I was not going to connect with people on Facebook if I don’t know them. It’s not meant as a slight to anyone. I just consider it something of an extension of my personal space, and I want to make sure that I know who the people are who are stopping by. At the same time, I’m not willing to suggest to Eagle staff members with their practice should be. That needs to be a personal decision. I do, though, ask that they be aware of the implications of people they might accept or invite as friends, and the potential for those connections to reflect on them in their role as a journalist.

Twitter is a much more open space, in my view, and I follow people there whom I have never met in person.

We’ll be working on a more specific social media policy in the coming weeks. If you wonder what other companies — both inside and outside the media business — have established for policies, Mashable points to a great directory of policies at Social Media Governance.

Stay tuned to the weather on Kansas.com, too. In time for winter storm season, we’ll soon introduce an expanded radar feature from our partners at WeatherData. More here when we get the radar in place in the next week or so.

First, I’m happy that dozens of you care enough to take the time to write and advocate for one puzzle or the other. Some of you really care.

I can’t answer all of your emails individually, but I can address a few points some of you brought up:

* I recognize that the Times puzzle is more difficult than the puzzle that we’ve traditionally run in the Sunday TV section. Both puzzles take up a significant amount of space, and we initially determined there would not be enough space to run both crosswords plus the movie listings. Enough people asked for both puzzles — and readers lobbied hard on either side for either the old crossword or the Times crossword — that we shifted advertising space to make room for both.

* When you prefer one type of puzzle, I think it’s hard to understand sometimes why someone would want anything else. A few readers said they simply don’t believe that anyone could enjoy doing the Times crossword puzzle. But fans of the Times puzzle — some of whom have corresponded with me for several years asking for the puzzle — circled the wagons quickly when they started seeing criticisms of it in the Opinion Line. I got a steady stream of emails that insulted people who wanted the easier crossword back. Peace now?

* Best laugh: Two readers suggested we switched to the Times puzzle as a cost-cutting move. First, I can assure you that the NY Times crossword is not a less-expensive puzzle option. Also, we added four pages to the TV section to get new puzzles and movie listings in.

* Most honest email: One reader said that, frankly, she wants an easy crossword so she can do it quickly, but still feel smart because she did a crossword puzzle.

Bear with us another week. The old puzzle will be back on the 18th.

The text of her remarks is interesting reading, tracking the role and investment of traditional media in driving openness from government, courts and other institutions.

Hat tip to Romenesko for the link.

Eighty. Thousand. Words.

Eighty thousand words about your city, nation and world in addition to sports, business, entertainment and commentary. All of it brought to you by people who live down your block, go to your church and shop at your stores.

On top of that, there are photos by prize-winning photographers, Parade magazine, comics and circulars that tell you what’s hot and, more importantly for many, what’s on sale.

Looking for a job or want to buy a car or a boat? Found a dog, lost a dog or want to adopt a dog? Going house hunting or mapping out your garage-sale route? There are hundreds of classified ads you can dig through.

Oh yeah, there’s also $318 worth of coupons.**

So . . . every Sunday you can read “The Old Man and the Sea” three times in a row and not save any money, or you can increase your knowledge, be entertained and potentially save hundreds of dollars.

All for only $2 — less if you have The Eagle delivered to your home.

Who says there aren’t bargains in the world?

* I chose May 3 because that’s when I started this project. It’s been six weeks, but man, that was a lot of counting. Also, numbers were counted as words. e.g. “The koala’s rampage sent 73 people to the hospital on April 14” would count as 12 words.

** This amount varies each week. But you’re smart, you knew that already.

Here’s a note posted Friday by Nick Jungman, our deputy editor for interactive:

You might have noticed that we’ve changed a few things on the Kansas.com home page.

We’ve been working for weeks to develop a new home page for the site that is cleaner and more organized. The often chaotic jumble of information we used to have on the home page has given way to a categorized, calmer design. We think it’s a vast improvement.

But we know changes like this can be disorienting for our readers. We’ll certainly be making changes in the coming days based on your feedback, as well as extending some of these changes to other pages of the site. If you’re having trouble finding anything, or have any suggestions you’d like us to consider, please pass them along. You can e-mail us at webmaster@wichitaeagle.com or sound off in the comments below.

TMS was able to track specific examples of incorrect listings, finding that in each case, the networks in question had changed their programming plans after we went to press with our TV section. Sometimes, the programming changed within hours of our printing.

Like most newspapers, we print the TV section well in advance of the day you receive it. TMS sends us a feed of the listings at a specified time each week to fit our printing schedule, and we discovered that significant changes were being made to programming after we printed the section. We can’t eliminate that completely — we need to print the section ahead of time to make room on the press for live news sections, and TV networks are always free to change their programming up to the last minute.

But the Eagle’s production director, Cindy Trenary, was able to shift printing schedules to nearly cut in half the advance time we need for printing the TV section. So beginning with the section you’ll receive on June 21, you’ll be getting more current listings that will capture many more of the programming changes that get made during the week.

We appreciate readers’ help in resolving these issues. Happy TV-watching.