Red ink on the opening page these days. Is this a sign of change?
Only red ink I see now is about some issue with Joke-A-Day - the people that handle emailing out the Friday “newsletters”
The problem with Joke-A-Day is serious and continuing, as it adversely affects the weekly Straight Dope mailing. The failure of the servers at Joke-A-Day is so serious that we haven’t had a mailing since June and we’re not sure when we will have another one, though we hope it happens soon.
I’m getting a zillion emails on the subject from people who really really want their Straight Dope weekly fix, who want their email changes to go through. By mentioning these problems on the front page I’m hoping people understand the problem is not on their end and we’re not just denying them their mailing for arbitrary reasons.
We are looking into other alternatives. Stay tuned for the resumption of the mailing as soon as we can manage it.
I don’t understand: Some people only get their Straight Dope weekly fix through email? Why can’t they just type www.straightdope.com into their address bar and get their fix that way?
I guess I understand if you signed up for the convenience of having a weekly email sent to your inbox, you might wonder what’s going on, but are people actually upset about not getting it right now? It’s not like there aren’t other ways of getting the Dope-- the easiest of which would be the one I mention above.
The emails, however, come out earlier. So you don’t have to wait for Friday to get your dose of Cecil. 
The mailing goes out at 4:00 eastern time Friday morning. It’s just a little taste of what’s coming in the next few days, the upcoming column to be published Friday morning, the Special Report (when we have one), the next Cecil’s Classic or two, depending.
It’s proven to be quite popular and we hope to be able to resume these mailings soon.
I got mine today. Hopefully, they’ve got it fixed for good.
(As opposed to being fixed for evil?)
They’ve ditched joke-a-day and taken it in-house, it seems.
Not exactly; we have a helpful Doper friend who has stepped up as Joke-A-Day has stepped out. A blessing.
Thanks to Ray Owens for all he did for us for all the years and best wishes in all his future endeavors. Ray was very good to us.
(As is the new guy. We have great people here.)