Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Daily Howler

This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was Keep. Redwolf24 00:44, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Daily Howler

No assertion of notability for this blog. Alexa does not even have a traffic ranking for them. So, Delete Oops, the URL given in the article has no alexa, but apparently their correct address does. I don't see anything notable about it though. No vote. Friday (talk) 01:09, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

• Keep, 907,000 google hits [1], alexa rank 42,633 [2] Kappa 01:14, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment:Kappa's Google search shows only 278 unique hits. Zoe 04:59, August 18, 2005 (UTC)
    • What is unique about them? Kappa 05:02, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
      • Unique pages. The count you gave is for duplicate mentions on the same page or in the same website. Zoe 06:39, August 18, 2005 (UTC)
• Keep as notable blog as per Kappa. Capitalistroadster 02:02, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, extremely notable American media commentator. Nandesuka 03:04, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
• Weak keep and cleanup. The 'blog seems (barely) notable (though my standards seem stricter than the more cluey WPdians), but the article isn't all that well-written and comes across as POV. Combined with no assertion of notability, I can see why Friday thought it appropriate for VfD. --fuddlemark 05:40, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Doesn't seem more notable in form or content than most other blogs, and ( unlike some others ) doesn't appear to have "made any political weather". High site traffic is not the same as notability. WMMartin 10:21, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, almost all blogs are stupid and non-notable. Every single blog with an article could be covered in one article, titled List of notable blogs, which would have - at most - 20 blogs on it. 99.9999% of blogs are worthless. 278 unique hits != notable. Proto t c 11:54, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. I'd like to know the source of the claim that it gets only 278 unique hits despite getting 857,000 hits on Google -- especially since Alexa says that 339 sites link to it. --Calton | Talk 14:02, August 18, 2005 (UTC)
  • Click on Kappa's link and go to the last page of the search. Zoe 18:32, August 18, 2005 (UTC)
• Keep; notable blog. But clean up per fuddlemark. -- JDoorjam 14:03, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
• Weak delete in agreement with WMMartin and Zoe. No indication of significance. Barno 14:24, 18 August 2005 (UTC) ...Vote changed to keep based on additional evidence of widespread notice beyond that of most political blogs. Barno 17:51, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
• Delete; nn Erwin Walsh
• Keep; exceptionally notable Web site, it is ranked #237 at the Truth Laid Bear social network analysis site with over 500 unique inbound links, most from major blogs like Kos, Talking Points Memo and Americablog.--Gorgonzilla 17:29, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
• Strong Keep I have yet to see more compelling evidence of notability. --Lomedae 17:46, August 18, 2005 (UTC)
• Keep; blog passes any standard for notability that does not arbitrarily exclude blogs--Craigkbryant 17:57, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Trollderella 18:11, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Notable, article could be improved. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 21:38, 2005 August 18 (UTC)
• This one's a keeper. It's Bob Somersby's stuff, guys. BTW, I'm shocked at this 278 figure - something really wrong there — the Howler is huge. The article on WP could use improvement, though.—Encephalon | ^ζ  21:40:04, 2005-08-18 (UTC)

[edit] Reply by original author of article

The Daily Howler is notable because it is one of the most influential political blogs out there. Arguably, it is notable also because it was one of the earliest political blogs (1998).

Evidence of influence (this list could easily be expanded):

• The Columbia Journalism Review ran an article[3] about The Daily Howler and its author Bob Somerby from which I quote: "Bob Somerby needs no introduction, of course, unless your days are spent solely in the brick-and-mortar world..."
• Paul Krugman opened one of his op-eds[4] for the New York Times as follows:

A message to my fellow journalists: check out media watch sites like campaigndesk.org, mediamatters.org and dailyhowler.com. It's good to see ourselves as others see us. I've been finding The Daily Howler's concept of a media "script," a story line that shapes coverage, often in the teeth of the evidence, particularly helpful in understanding cable news.

• The Daily Howler was included by CNN[5] on a list of about twenty "political must-read" websites.
• It is currently listed by Alexa as the tenth ranked journalism site.[6]
• Many of the most prominent political blogs include The Daily Howler on their blog roll or equivalent, despite the fact that Somerby does not reciprocate (he has no such list): e.g. Daily Kos, Instapundit and Brad Delong's site[7] (I only checked these three).

Replies to comments by others:

• I agree with fuddlemark that this article is not that well-written. Call me crazy, but I created a stub in the hope that the Wikipedia community would improve it.
• I don't understand why fuddlemark thinks the article is POV. I thought I bent over backwards to make it NPOV with locutions like "according to Bob Somerby".
• Google rankings: when I search for "daily howler" on Google[8] I get 1.54 million hits (not that it makes a qualitative difference, but I'm not sure why I get a different number than Kappa; perhaps we have different preferences). I think the "unique" number Zoe refers to is the number in the sentence at the end of a Google search (I had to go all the way to page 37 for "daily howler"):

"In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the XXX already displayed." For "daily howler", I get XXX = 367. Perhaps Zoe, Barno and Proto would like to suggest Wikipedia for deletion since it only gets 199 "hits" by this metric.  ;)

• I agree with Proto that most blogs are not notable, but of course that argument has no force in talking about a particular blog. I strongly disagree with his/her notion that all articles about particular blogs be merged into a single article or list. Should we do the same for newspapers? In fact I think Wikipedia has the opposite problem: the coverage of notable blogs is weaker than I would expect, especially of an online encyclopedia.

Crust 17:14, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

• Keep I think the Daily Howler is well enough known for inclusion. Part of the problem was that despite the author's attempt to be NPOV, s/he is clearly too close to the material to excise bias from his/her writeup. I have cleaned up the entry, eliminated the POV and I think it should be more palatable. Dottore So 17:59, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

• Keep Considered a blogger's blog by those in the know. Highly notable. Bcarlson33 21:32, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.