Solution

The newspaper consists of four mini-puzzles, which are commonly used by New York Times daily puzzles. Connections: The quote hints towards doing the same thing twice. Grouping them 4 by 4, one gets the following categories: guitar, bass, singer, drums. Doing this one more time on the categories yields the word "band". Strands: Solving strands the normal way will give the spangram "colors". The quote hints how the strands grid should be used together with the mini-sudoku - from top to bottom. Mini-sudoku: The quote hints towards what numbers should be used after solving it - the highest and the lowest, 6 and 1. Overlaying the strands-grid and reading top to bottom (doing it for 1s and 6s separately), one gets the words "superb" and "pyknic". Letter boxed: While letter boxed can be solved in multiple ways, only one way is going to yield the answer - using the previous 4 words and the word "digit" (as hinted by the quote). This can the only be arranged in one way to adhere to the letter boxed rules: pyknic-colors-superb-band-digit. The quote also hints towards using each word on its own, as well as ignoring "digit" (as it is only needed to get the letter boxed solution, not the task solution). Drawing lines for each word (as is done in letter boxed), one draws a letter. Pyknic draws "R", colors draws "S", superb draws "V", band draws "P", yielding the answer RSVP.