Charles Apple

Please join with me in wishing a happy VizEds birthday to Matt Mansfield, deputy managing editor of The San Jose Mercury News. Matt turns 40 today.

Yeah, yeah, we know. We thought he was much older than that, too.

Matt attempts to look like a local in Syracuse in February. This photo and the others are stolen from various Flickr feeds.
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Matt is treasurer and secretary for the Society for News Design. He’ll be the president of SND in 2009.As DME, Matt oversees design, graphics, photo and business reporting for the Merc. As he says in his bio at LinkedIn:

Our coverage of the global technology story here has been recognized among the best in the world.

The Society of American Business Editors and Writers awarded the Mercury News‘ business coverage as the best among large newspapers. We also were awarded “Best Use of the Web” by the National Press Photographers Association this year.

The Mercury News has been awarded several Pulitzer Prizes, and we were most recently a finalist in 2004 for our photography on the special California recall election.

Oh, yeah: Under Matt’s direction, the Merc has won five gold and more than 20 silver medals in the annual SND contest. This year alone, the Merc won 55 SND awards. In 2002, The Mercury News was named one of the “World’s Best-Designed Newspaper” by SND.

Matt’s been in San Jose for seven years. Previously, he was a features editor and then DME for the Munster, Ind., Times of Northwest Indiana.

Matt is a 1990 graduate of Eastern Illinois University. Among other alumni from that school: Cassie Armstrong of The Orlando Sentinel, Chris Soprych of The Rockford Register Star, Mike Rice of The Arizona Star, Matt Erickson of The Times of Northwest Indiana and Robb Montgomery, creator of VizEds.

Matt enjoys embarrassing himself with Karoke. Here, he sings while Denise Reagan attempts to keep a straight face.
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At this very moment, Matt is smack in the middle of a huge effort to completely rethink his newspaper from the ground up. You may recall, we blogged about it last week. Find the blog that will give Matt and his team quite a bit of transparency as they work on their “reTHINK” project here.

Matt doesn’t have an online portfolio posted — that we know of — but he oversees a lot of talented folks who do. Jonathan Berlin. Martin Gee. Pai. Kevin Wendt. Michael Tribble. Tiffany Pease. Ashley Dinges. Carrie Hoover. Until recently, Tim Ball.

Find a staff portfolio of work by Matt’s crew here.

If you asked me to design a page around it, I’d chase you out of my office. But I don’t hesitate to slap a grip-and-grin photo of me and Matt in my blog. Go figure.
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There was a huge party in San Francisco last weekend to celebrate Matt’s milestone. He blogged about it Tuesday at SND Update.

Matt shares a birthday with actor Ben Affleck, TV journalist Linda Ellerbee, the late Julia Child and the even more late Napoleon Bonaparte.

In addition, today is National Relaxation Day. Seriously.

Matt is one of the kindest, most supportive, energetic folks I know. He’s a wonderful leader in our field. I’m proud to know him. And I admire his work greatly.

Matt… dude, if you even know how to relax — take advantage of National Relaxation Day and kick back. For at least 24 hours.

Best wishes for a happy 40th!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 15th, 2007 at 5:11 am and is filed under Happy birthday, Newspapers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.