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Depressing Graphic Of The Day

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by Mark Stein
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May 28 2008 12:00am EDT

Depressing Graphic of the Day

For fans of dead-tree media (and, believe it or not, there are still millions of us out there), there exists an irresistibly gruesome graphic that plots newspaper layoffs around the country. It resembles nothing so much as an epidemiological map of a spreading disease.

(The latest victims: At least 30 people at the Pasadena Star-News in California and 15 people at the Galveston County Daily News in Texas.)

The chart is the handiwork of Erica Smith, who describes herself as a journalist and a newspaper and multimedia designer at the venerable St. Louis Post-Dispatch. (That newspaper cut 31 jobs in March, according to her map.)

Tellingly, Smith also owns up to being "Twenty-four-hour-news-channel addicted. Breaking-news-e-mail-alerts addicted. Text-message-alerts addicted."

One hopes that she is also newspaper-addicted. But even if she were, she'd be in the minority among her generation. And the number of newspaper junkies shrinks every day.

by Mark Stein

(Jeff Bercovici is on vacation.)

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