When Chancellor Nancy Cantor announced she’d be stepping down in 2014, many saw it as the end of an era. We saw it as an opportunity to Photoshop her face onto a bus wrap.
The NewsHouse created a fake news story for April 1 visitors [12] about three proposed Cantor tributes — a “Nancy Rising” statue featuring Shaquille O'Neal, a “Connective Cantorridor” rebranding and a huge, smiling brick face mosaic in the Quad. Our completely non-scientific poll had the statue winning by a landslide.
As April Fools' Day was nearing, our lead producer team originally toyed with either displaying the entire site in a universally reviled typeface (like Comic Sans or Papyrus) or converting it into a basic HTML site with '90s-style clipart (à la Geocities). But when someone mentioned the chancellor's departure as the focus, the room erupted in cheers and fireworks (more or less). By the end of the day, we had three solid commemorative ideas.
I wrote the fake story, staying up way too late and doing way too much research — for example, my first draft had Shaq’s agent’s actual name. Our assistant executive producer Melanie Deziel punched up the story, and our resident graphics genius Nick DeSantis brought it to life with hilarious artistic renderings.
Here are some of the reactions we got on Syracuse.com [13] and Twitter, plus your chance to still vote for your favorite:
“Not gonna lie, I'm kind of a fan of the ‘Nancy Rising’ statue http://t.co/ahgxMXduUt [14]” (@KerryMWolfe)
“Statue of Cantor ... No further proof needed of SU's insanity than that.” (ThrWorldAsItIs)
“Really wish this wasn't April Fools...‘@NewsHouse: EXCLUSIVE: Syracuse University considering Nancy Cantor statue... http://ow.ly/jCNW4 [15]’” (@mofinn31)
“what the hell?” (am)
“I tend to think April Fools articles are more trouble than they're worth, but this @NewsHouse one is pretty funny: http://ow.ly/jCMs1 [16]” (@JessicaIanetta)
