Aren't crosswords submitted as PDF files? I can understand why the providers might not want the extra effort to create .jpz and .puz files, but emailing PDFs costs next to nothing.
Seriously?? Well that sure sucks. Who's got the time in 2019 to do crosswords only in print? I was hoping that more publishers would be making their content available on phones and tablets. Sadly, it seems to be moving in the wrong direction
These publishers would have to speak themselves as to the reasons they're doing this. But I can make what I feel is a pretty good guess. A lot of online content has a concern based on storage and distribution. If it goes far enough, they have a threat of losing their copyright/control over their content. So more or less, any view that the content might be costing them opportunities at money (a lot of for-pay content providers believe that people seeing content for free are people not buying the publication that should) will cause them to either severely limit the content (like offering a 7-14 day window online) or pull the content all together.
For example, the New York Times sells puzzle books, so having their content freely available online would cramp their ability to do that. They want to play online though, hence the subscription model.
I can sorta get why the Boston Globe might pull the Crooked Crosswords since there's money involved in the subscription, but I completely don't understand CHE's decision, especially since their crosswords are drawing a lot of people outside of their intended readership that probably won't
plunk down $99.95 a year for the print publication. It's a pure fantasy if they think people will do that just to get the crossword.
Overall, I get there's costs involved in paying constructors, along with other costs to get the crosswords in people's hands. But what I don't get is people getting overly greedy past that.
