How Rex Huppke’s obit for facts exploded
Rex Huppke’s Chicago Tribune essay (“Facts, 360 B.C. – A.D. 2012″) was Tweeted over 3,500 times and recommended on Facebook more than 24,000 times. “Its overall shares, via Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, Google+, Digg, Reddit and Tumblr, totaled more than 88,990,” reports Caitlin Johnston. She writes:
Sure, news sites can attract a large audience with pictures of two-headed cats and Kim Kardashian, but this was different. This resonated.
“It wasn’t one of those cheap kinds of clicks,” [deputy metro editor Mark] Jacob says. “Those are empty calories. With this, they’ll read all the way to the end, and they’ll talk about it and remember it.”
* The man behind the Obit for Facts
* The story behind the best op-ed ever
Facts wife, Fact Checking, died several years earlier.