Paper Cuts When a local newspaper closes, the damage doesn't announce itself — it shows up later, in the numbers. Paper Cuts is a console I built to make that visible: drag a newsroom from fully staffed to shuttered and watch a town's civic vital signs slide into the red — borrowing costs, contested ballots, split-ticket voting — each tied to published research. The country has lost roughly 3,500 local papers since 2005 and still loses more than two a week. This is what leaves with them.