Once upon a time in America, newspapers were entertainment.Comic strips, crossword puzzles, advice columns, bridge columns gave people relief from the tedium of the assembly line and nights with only three television networks.Every time I change a comic strip or panel, I find out that some people still care about those entertainment features and don’t hesitate to demand to know what I was thinking, or worse. But over my 14 years at the Trib. the breadth of anger when we’ve made a change on the comics page has diminished noticeably. That doesn’t mean we’re ready to quit providing you with delightful diversions. Soduko puzzles recently became quite the rage; so we got on the bandwagon. Humor remains the best antidote to a bad news day.And for those days I prescribe Tribune columnist Michael Grady and his Guy Side column that runs every Tuesday on our East Valley Life section cover.One recent column began this way:"Summer finds many couples trapped inside with each other’s movie rentals. Much has been said about the dangers of shallow, male-oriented action films, but a steady diet of chick flicks isn’t healthy, either. Years ago, after a Meg Ryan movie marathon, we had to detox a friend of mine, dragging him into a sports bar and cussing in front of him until he felt safe again."The Tribune’s East Valley columnist, Slim Smith, and sports columnist Scott Bordow can take you through a range of emotions from anger to laughter.Their value to you is insight and entertainment. Smith recently attended the opening of Cosmo Dog Park in Gilbert. There, he met Tony and Carolyn Fox and their Bernese mountain dog.Here’s an excerpt from his column: "Before going to the park, I went online to a site where you can find out what breed of dog you would be, based on your answers to 19 questions. Well, wouldn’t you know it, my answers revealed that I would be a Bernese mountain dog. "So I asked Tony and Carolyn to tell me what I’m like. "’They are very amiable,’" Tony said. "’They’re definitely not guard dogs,’" Carolyn offered. "Tony figures that the dog would protect you, when it got right down to it, most likely after a very careful risk assessment. He also said they are lazy and like to eat. "I’m kinda sorry I ran into the Foxes, now that I think about it."Jerry Brown three times a week lampoons the world of sports in his "Brownie Points" column.He and Michael Grady are our newsroom humorists.As I was writing this column assistant features editor Sam Mittelsteadt left me with an "I hadn’t thought about that" moment by pointing out there are more ways that the Tribune entertains than through the wits of our columnists or our standing entertainment features.Mittelsteadt works closely with photographers, artists and page designers to bring together East Valley Life section covers. Entertaining readers is as much his goal as informing them.I hope their (readers’) curiosity is piqued by at least one thing every day — an "I didn’t know that" moment, whether it’s in a wire Q&A or our centerpiece article," Mittelsteadt said. "I hope they find their questions answered and their brains tickled, because information without entertainment is basically an encyclopedia entry."You are the judge on whether we entertain as well as inform you.I do know that, if you spend some time with us, you will discover that the Tribune is a great guide to entertainment.The Tribune’s Get Out magazine and its web site, Getoutaz.com, are dedicated to helping you have a good time and to the trends in the East Valley among those who, well, get out a lot.Major professional and at certain levels of university sports is really entertainment, and our sports section is a guide to this massive entertainment industry.Les Willsey, who has covered East Valley high school sports for 21 years says he knows of parents of high school football players who return to Friday games long after their sons graduated. "They’re hooked," he said. And his job is to gather the information that will help them stay informed on the players and the teams. I’d like to hear which columnists you read and why. Please go to the blog version of this column at evtrib.com to comment.Next: How we do what we do.

A former reader by the name of Ron let me know in an email that he wished to quit receiving the Tribune.I replied that I would forward his request to our circulation department for processing, but would he first mind telling me why. "There is nothing in it that is new, and the news that you do have in the paper is old. In the fast-moving world that we live in nowadays, you get it quicker on cable," he wrote back.I could have argued with him, but I didn’t. His interests seemed limited to the kind of news that the cable news networks specialize in–not in community news where we often break stories.But I won’t deny that the equation, when it comes to breaking news, has changed since the introduction of radio, then TV and now the Internet.Here’s what we are doing about it:When it comes to national and international news we edit our pages attempting to answer the questions: What next, why and what does it mean to you?We haven’t always done this. When the space shuttle Columbia broke up over Texas in 2003, our headlines some 24-hours later told you what you already knew: The shuttle and crew were gone. We didn’t work hard enough to tell you want you didn’t know: What happened.Admittedly, plumbing the depths of news is not for scanners like Ron; it is for serious news consumers.On local stories that we dig up or enterprise, we are the first source. For instance, Tribune reporter Sarah Lynch was the only reporter to interview the father of Robin Blasnek, the Mesa victim in the recent serial killings.Unfortunately for newspapers, radio and TV news anchors get up earlier than many subscribers and read our stories on air, sometimes without credit. On local breaking stories that the television and radio news teams are also covering, we’ll often "swarm" a story. We have more reporters than any local television station and our deadlines are later. Our goal is to give you more depth, detail and perspective than they can on selected stories.And broadcast news may only report on the top four or five stories. They won’t tell you what is happening in Gilbert–if news is also breaking in the bigger city of Phoenix.Still, a printed newspaper may seem hopelessly out of date for casual news consumers.No problem. We have a large, hard-working news team and we’ve got the Internet.Increasingly, we are turning more of our efforts to get the headlines and news highlights up on our Web site before our news competitors. The Internet had changed our news universe as it has changed yours.When we had the first big monsoon storm of the season, we had an advantage over regularly scheduled TV news because the storm didn’t really start hitting until roughly 10 p.m. We had until midnight to get our story together. Consequently, we had a pretty good report in the morning’s paper–certainly better than the previous night’s 10 p.m. TV news report. But the news didn’t stop at midnight. The next morning we mobilized reporters and editors to update the story. And it turned out to be a doozy, with electricity outages and uprooted trees and damaged homes–information we didn’t have when our print deadline rolled around.We also had people like you offering to help out. One reader sent us 78 pictures of damage in south Scottsdale. We put many of those photos up on our Web site.And when Phoenix and Mesa police captured two men accused of being Valley serial killers past all local news deadlines, we posted on our Web site the story of their capture at 2:30 a.m.One news junkie e-mailed his congratulations, saying we had beaten the Arizona Republic by hours on the story. In this young 21st century, news consumers have even more choices, ranging from the depth and local enterprise in the printed version of the Tribune to breaking news on our Web site. We don’t have a doubt that we can be just as competitive for news consumers who demand immediacy as local TV or radio.We’re also learning to embrace the multimedia nature of Internet news.For instance, one of our photographers followed with her camera and her tape recorder a refugee family who came to Valley after Hurricane Katrina. Her photos and accompanying stories went into the print edition of the East Valley Tribune, while a version with audio reporting went on eastvalleytribune.com Check out eastvalleytribune.com. Hey, make us your home page. Or at least give us a book mark. Now that you’ve bookmarked eastvalleytribune.com, do me one more favor and give me your thoughts on these questions on my blog at our Web site. If you are a newspaper reader, what can we do to improve your experience? If you prefer getting your news on ours or another local Web site, tell me why? What can we do to improve your experience? Next Tuesday: Newspapers as entertainment.