"I think that Connie could make her biggest contribution to the Trib by firing herself!"

Well, that's a bit harsh. I won't do it.

And then came these suggestions from a reader who told us how he wants his Tribune:

"1. Take all the ads and put them in their own section.

"2. Don't make me page hop to read an entire story.

"3. If you're going to make a change - spend an extra dollar or two to try a one-day test, inserted in addition to the original, so that we can compare and comment. Don't just change it out of the blue and wait for people to squawk.

"4. Who is doing this 'research of changing readers' habits'? Who sold you that load of garbage? They have the arrogance to presume to know what we want. Don't ask them - ask us. This way, you won't have to apologize.

"5. Hire some people who have the foresight to see that a proposed change isn't going to work (no matter what 'research' says) and the guts to stand up to the suits and say, 'No, that dog won't hunt.' Then listen to [readers].

"6. What we want is the W5H - Who, What, When, Where, Why, How - skip all the sensationalist hype. Words like 'spewed,' 'careened,' 'thunderous,' 'viciously' belong in novels, not in the news. Just the facts, avoid speculation."

Let me tackle these in order:

1. No self-respecting advertiser is going to pay us money to put their ads in a separate section. The idea the advertisers have in mind is that readers will be reading the paper and stop to glance at an interesting advertisement. That cannot happen if their ads are all stuffed into one section. You will have to face this economic reality.

2. The front pages of sections are designed to give the best and latest news and to draw readers to the pages inside. Everyone who reads a newspaper has to learn how to cope with this problem of stories that start on the front and then are jumped inside. I am a proponent of scanning all the stuff on the front and then following the jumps of the stories that interest me. This may change, however, as some newspapers in this country have gone to front pages and section fronts that have photos and graphics as well as what we call SOS (stories on stories) that lead readers to full stories inside.

Simply, if you read the SOS blurbs, you know enough to sound smart around the water cooler, but not enough to be dangerous.

3. Admittedly, there could be ways to test changes on reader panels, but printing a page and a new version of a page on the same day is not the way to get reader reaction to changes.

4. We do studies several times a year of subscribers to the paper in order to determine how they use The Tribune and what they read. When changes become necessary, however, we include data from the studies in the decisions.

5. As far as I can tell, there are no people in the news business who have "the sight" as we used to call it in the South. If there were such an individual, we would hire him or her. Since we cannot find such an employee, we gather all the information, put our designers and editors to work on the challenge and produce the best idea we can.

Do we muff it sometimes? Sure. We did when we redesigned the comic pages and made the bridge column so small that the people who play bridge all the time (some of our seniors) could not read it if they used reading specs and a magnifying glass.

That error will be changed on Monday when the type size of the column will be larger, so bridge players should be able to figure out what cards to lead and learn the card lesson in the column.

6. We want the W5H - Who, What, When, Where, Why, How - also.

But the information should be well written and interesting.

It might surprise readers to know that some of our best novelists were newspaper people when they started: Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Pete Dexter.

So the ability to inform with elegance is something many newspaper people desire.

If any writers do speculate, that speculation is based on a knowledge of the people involved and a deep understanding of the areas the reporters cover.

But, please, continue to tell me what you think we should do and what we could do better.

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The Reader Advocate's phone number is (801) 257-8782. Write to the Reader Advocate, The Salt Lake Tribune, 90 S. 400 West, Suite 700, Salt Lake City, Utah 84101. E-mail: reader.advocate@sltrib.com.