‘Paper Cuts’ layoff site gets mega-publicity, mega-hits
Our pal Erica Smith — a multimedia genius with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, whom we profiled in a nice Q&A three months ago — found her Paper Cuts web page suddenly generating a huge number of hits Friday.
Erica Smith last October at SND/
Boston. Photo by paginatrix.
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The reason? Links from Gawker, MediaBistro, BuzzMachine and Editor & Publisher.
Erica writes:
My favorite headline: Death by 1,000 paper cuts.
Graphicdesignr.net had more traffic on Friday — 2,556 visits — than the entire month before!
In addition, Erica says she spoke Friday with a reporter from MediaBistro. That site might possibly publish an interview with her soon.
This couldn’t have happened to a better-deserving person. Erica is freakin’ brilliant. She’s smart. She’s hip. She’s fun. And she’s a wonderful visual journalist.
Aw, hell, strike the visual part and just call her a wonderful journalist who just happens to be well-versed in the visual side.
If you’ve not seen it, Graphicdesignr is a very nice blog. Erica also keeps a fascinating directory of stories with the word “man” in their headlines:
* Man dead in bed for three months
* Man found guilty of cruelty to roosters
* Man uses gun for backscratcher, shoots himself
* Man wins prize for ‘elephant loo’
* Man used cell phone to bug ex-girlfriend
But her PaperCuts section consists of a running tally of newspaper layoff announcements, tied to an interactive U.S. map.
It’s a clever idea and one you’d think E&P or AJR or CJR or some major outfit like that would have thought of first. But as was the case with NewsPageDesigner’s Tim Frank and VizEds‘ Robb Montgomery, leave it to the grass-roots folks to come up with the truly innovative stuff.
Erica: I’m really proud of you. You have the spotlight. Now sing!
May 27th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
I can see I’m going to have to jump on the bandwagon and blog about this. Why let Charles and Gawker have all the fun? Seriously, Erica, that’s a way cool project.