Talk:John Seigenthaler, Sr.

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Contents 1 Nearly FA quality 2 The best thing that ever happened to Wikipedia 3 red links 4 Recent edits 5 Title of this article 6 Encyclopedic information or trivia? 7 Seigenthaler and Gore 8 Recent vandalism attempts 9 The subject of this article has requested that they not be included in Wikipedia.

[edit] Nearly FA quality

If we could only fill in a coherent narrative about his editor days -- the article's only lacuna. Lotsofissues 05:37, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

The article also mentions virtually nothing about his tenure as founding editorial director of USA Today. Kaldari 05:47, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

But I guess that's because there isn't really much (if any) info out there about it. He seems to be far more notable for his earlier activities at The Tennessean. Kaldari 22:21, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The best thing that ever happened to Wikipedia

I'm floored.

--James S. 03:44, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

It gets more interesting if you realise that we were jostling for position with cnn.com at the time. Now no longer. ;-) Kim Bruning 04:04, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Heh, heh! Look who's next. --James S. 08:48, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Is that graph right? Wikipedia has 2 billion page views per day? I don't believe it.

• Statistics are easily fabricated to support whatever agenda. --Agamemnon2 07:12, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
  • You may think that sounds smart, but it isn't original and these statistics weren't fabricated. Golfcam 01:40, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
    • Who's next? :P But we shouldn't be poking fun at an issue which is definitely a sore point.--Shaliron 12:26, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
      • Cool it folks.. Don't forget that every single time us, the editors, also look at a page, do a revert, edit a small word, it also counts as a hit, because we are hitting the Wikipedia web site again.. It is that simple... Baristarim 07:55, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] red links

There seems to be a lot of red links. Are they really needed? For example, I think we could remove his high school link and probably a few others. Comments? Gflores ^Talk 15:56, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I think almost all of the red links can go. The only exception I feel strongly about is the National Headliner Award which should definitely have an article. The Sidney Hillman Prize and Robert F. Kennedy Book Award might also be worth leaving, although they are not as well known as the National Headliner Award. Kaldari 16:24, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Looks much better. Thanks. Gflores ^Talk 02:52, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Please note that red links are important; they help generate the list of Special:Wanted pages. +sj +

I don't think any of the red links that were eliminated were especially "wanted". Previously every person mentioned in the article was a link no matter how small their notariety.Kaldari 14:05, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Recent edits

I disagree with many of the recent edits to this article. Let's take them one-by-one:

1. Removing the word "prestigious"

   I disagree with this one the most. The Neiman Fellowship is the most prestigious journalism program in the United States. If you need me to cite something to back that up, here are 766 citations. Using the word "prestigious" here is not POV or overly floral writing. Wikipedia writing does not have to be completely bland and equivocal. We can use adjectives, yes, even strong ones, where appropriate.

   The lovely thing about hyperlinked text is that you can follow the link to find out exactly how prestigious a particular award is... you might investigate how other articles that link to Neiman Fellowship describe it, if at all.

   From Wikipedia:The perfect article: "The perfect Wikipedia article is nearly self-contained; includes and explains all essential terminology required in the article, such that someone could completely understand the subject without having to read many other articles."
   

   Unless you work in the field of journalism you probably have no idea what a Neiman Fellowship is. The prestige of being offered a Neiman Fellowship is certainly relavent to Seigenthaler's notability and career. Without the word "prestigous" the reader has no idea of the magnatude of the event and is left to assume that it is just another journalism program.Kaldari 20:24, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

2. Changing "a battle to eliminate the unsavory activities of the local branch of the Teamsters" to "a battle against the activities of the local branch of the Teamsters"

   The second version is misleading and makes it sound like the Teamsters have no legitimate or lawful activities.

   Whereas the former makes it sound as though all the activities of the Teamsters are unsavory. Perhaps "against certain activities" ? +sj +

   How about "began a battle to eliminate corruption within the local branch of the Teamsters"? Kaldari 20:32, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

3. Changing "Known as a staunch defender of civil rights" to "At one point"

   This also seems like a needless attempt to water-down the writing and make it safely bland. Really, we should have an entire paragraph (at the least) about Seigenthaler's legacy as a hero of civil rights. Instead, we have only a clause in one sentence (that has now been removed).

   There's no room for unsourced compliments in a good biography. If you want to cite a specific and moving recognition of his defense of civil rights, that's fine. If you want to write an informative paragraph about his heroic work about civil rights, even better. But indicate his heroism with detail and information, not with adjectives and vague claims of how he was known. +sj +

   Your point is well taken, however, given the fact that Seigenthaler's legacy as a prominent defender of civil rights is well known and agruably needs to be more emphasized in this article, I think it would be more helpful to ask for citations before gutting such statements rather than after. But I suppose I'm splitting hairs. If you challenge that the assertion is uncited, I suppose someone will have to find a citation... Kaldari 20:45, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

4. Removing "who declined to file suit".

   Anyone reading about the controversy, even in this summarized version is going to want to know what the outcome was. Once Chase confessed, what did Seigenthaler do? To leave the outcome out (however anti-climactic) is to leave the reader hanging. I don't think those five words add unneccessary length to the article. In fact I believe they contribute to an understanding of Seigenthaler's character (which is more appropriate for this article than other details such as the fact that Daniel Brandt was the person who traced the IP).

   All of that detail should be in the main article on the subject, not here. Chase's name isn't relevant enough to Seigenthaler to show up here at all. +sj +

   Agreed. Your new version is much better. Kaldari 20:49, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Kaldari 14:38, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Title of this article

The name "John Seigenthaler Sr." is something of a misnomer. For most of Seigenthaler's early life he was actually known as "John Lawrence Seigenthaler Jr." since his dad's name is also "John Lawrence Seigenthaler". Once he became a prominent journalist, he was generally referred to as simply "John Seigenthaler" or "John Lawrence Seigenthaler". It was not until relatively recently that people began referring to him as "John Seigenthaler Sr." to distinguish him from his son, the journalist John Michael Seigenthaler. This is a bit confusing, however, since the original John Lawrence Seigenthaler was also sometimes referred to as "John Seigenthaler Sr." back in the fifties. So to summarize this rather confusing history, the subject of this article has been known under three different names over the course of his life: "John Seigenthaler Jr.", "John Seigenthaler", and "John Seigenthaler Sr." Does it make sense for us to use "John Seigenthaler Sr." as the title? Or should it be change it to simply "John Seigenthaler" or "John Lawrence Seigenthaler"? Kaldari 20:37, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Encyclopedic information or trivia?

"In 2002, when it was discovered that USA Today reporter Jack Kelley had fabricated some of his stories, USA Today turned to Seigenthaler, along with veteran editors Bill Hilliard and Bill Kovach, to monitor the investigation."

Is this important and relavent enough to include in Seigenthaler's article? It seems like a rather trivial fact compared to the rest of the article's content. I can think of many more notable events concerning Seigenthaler that are not even mentioned in this article for the sake of brevity and encyclopedic merit. Would anyone object if I removed this paragraph? Kaldari 06:39, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

It certainly is relevant. And while it is not the most important thing that Seigenthaler did in his life, I would not call it trivia either. Seigenthaller was chosen to oversee the investigation because he was considered to be one of the newspaper business's luminaries.

It is odd that you consider this to be trivia unworthy of inclusion, but you let go the comment that Dolores Watson gave up her dreams of a musical career to marry Seigenthaler and that John Nye served as publisher at the Tennessean while Seigenthaler was not working there. Can you explain why you did not feel the need to remove those bits of trivia? -- JPMcGrath 04:00, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I suppose the main reason is that the Later Life section feels more like a list of random factoids than a coherant narrative, especially the last few paragraphs before the Wikipedia controversy section. I would like to see the section edited to contribute more to the overall narrative of the article, and part of that should include culling the factoids down a bit. I think that particular paragraph could be re-added if someone were to give it a bit more context, for example by mentioning it as an example of how Seigenthaler is considered one of the newspaper's luminaries and maybe mentioning other ways he has bee associated with the paper since his retirement. Originally the paragraph had no context and seemed a bit out of place, like it had just been tacked on rather than woven into the article in a way that contributed to the story. Try reading the entire article through at once. You'll see that it does a fairly good job of being coherant and keeping your interest up until the Later Life section. But I suppose that part of the reason for that is that the Later Life section is ongoing and doesn't have the benefit of historical hindsight yet. Regardless, I do think it could be better written. Kaldari 05:54, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Seigenthaler and Gore

Here's an article about Gore's investigative reporting days: http://archives.cjr.org/year/93/1/gore.asp 67.170.241.246 03:05, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Recent vandalism attempts

In the past week there have been several sophisticated vandalism attempts on this article. Some of them have been successful at keeping vandalism unnoticed for several days. Please be attentive to all changes to this article, even apparent reversions of vandalism. Kaldari 22:57, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if this is the right page to mention this, but this edit should probably be removed from the page history. — User:ACupOfCoffee@ 01:38, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, that's easier said than done. There are 1,071 revisions to this article, so if you want to remove 1 revision you have to choose the 1,070 that you want to keep... by hand... one at a time. Plus removing that one revision doesn't necessarily remove the vandalism as it may have survived for several versions before being removed. If someone can come up with a good list of versions that need to be deleted (and there are a lot of them for this article), I'll go through the delete/restore process, but it's just not worth the trouble to remove one single revision. Give me half a dozen or so and I'll go ahead and do it. Kaldari 20:51, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia:Libel, I just went through and removed all of the ones from 2006. There still might be some in the December 2005 range. Hope that helps. Alphachimp 06:04, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The subject of this article has requested that they not be included in Wikipedia.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't believe this is true. He never actually requested that his article be deleted, he just complained that it was inaccurate.  YDAM TALK 18:36, 26 October 2006 (UTC)