Talk:John Seigenthaler, Sr.

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Good article John Seigenthaler, Sr. has been listed as one of the Social sciences and society good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a reassessment.
December 12, 2005 Good article nominee Listed
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[edit] Article Needs To Make Clear That This is NOT Brian Chase the Musician, also listed on Wikipedia

Making matters worse on the article about the OTHER (innocent) Brian Chase, there is a link back to this article. Rather than working as disambiguation, it creates the false impression that the wrong Brian Chase is the offender.

Sean7phil (talk) 16:47, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I've added a note in the same parentheses as Brian Chase that this is not the musician. There probably is a better way of doing this, and if anyone wants to have a go, feel free. However, I did not want to create a disambig page just for a one-off non-notable person (who had done something notable) which would probably get deleted anyway. I see on the Brian Chase article that someone has cleared it up a bit there. Hopefully all this will prevent confusion. StephenBuxton (talk) 16:55, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

[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)
Don't count on it. "hits" don't mean people believe Wikipedia is a good and reliable source. It's just a curiosity, nothing more. nut-meg 22:25, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
I believe that was his point. Mdotley 06:18, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure this was good for Wikipedia-- reading the OP Ed about the slander has made me respect and trust Wikipedia less.

Sean7phil (talk) 15:53, 22 January 2008 (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)

I'm disappointed no one has even bothered to comment on this. Mdotley 22:26, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
What if we used a Roman-numeral name system similar to IMDb.com, whereby the first John Doe is labeled John Doe(I), the second John Doe(II), the third John Doe(III), and so on? Since the first two John Seigenthalers were both John Lawrence, but the third John was John Michael, this perhaps would be the least ambiguous strategy. --Nonstopdrivel 23:55, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
That seems to be workable to me, but I'm not really familiare with WP naming conventions for articles. Is there any guidance there? Mdotley 23:36, 2 July 2007 (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)

You are correct. He never said delete the article. nut-meg 22:23, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Can an admin purge this from the edit history ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Seigenthaler%2C_Sr.&diff=94456920&oldid=94215560 Megapixie 06:07, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

LOL!! It was there just for 1 minute, i think is not a big deal...--Neo139 20:33, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
not a laughing matter (especially given this articles history), but I don't think it qualifies for oversight by any means (then again, I'm not really familiar with policies relating to that). Bawolff 06:30, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
I concur -- nothing libelous there. Mdotley 22:29, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
he shot and killed helpless women and children for personal pleasure. is not libelous? nut-meg 00:17, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
Not if it's marked as a joke, nothing about that is in the edit summary, and it's not left on the page. Mdotley 20:11, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Is this Comedy Central or an encyclopedia? nut-meg 22:14, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
The editor deleted it. Quickly. And even when it was created, it was marked to not be taken seriously. And it's the sort of thing that's so over the top, it wouldn't have been believed even if someone did happen to look at the page at the wrong time. It's gone. Relax. Mdotley 06:18, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The controversey

I find it to be completely hilarious, this Brian Chase is a genius, we need more vandalism like that—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.75.175.125 (talk • contribs) 04:43, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

And people like you will make Wikipedia into a big joke, if it isn't already. You want to trash people, first learn to spell, then start your own little blog. nut-meg 18:48, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
And people like you who make a huge deal out of this stuff is what keeps it popular to vandalize pages. People will do it just because they know it bothers you, and other people who whine about it. Either way, there will always be vandalism, that's the risk of having a wiki. LeviathanMist 19:59, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
If wikipedia is to be taken seriously as a source of information, it is a huge deal. I could care less what vandals think of me. They are pathetic creatures with nothing better to to. It's sad. nut-meg 21:57, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
WP:DENY. ShadowHalo 13:23, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
Permitting vandalism like this is what makes wikipedia so unreliable. Since so many here want to ignore it, pretend it's not a problem, and wag fingers at anyone who wants to combat it, this site will never be taken seriously. nut-meg 22:20, 8 July 2007 (UTC)


Hurting someone's reputation by lying makes the slanderer a genius? Hitler was a genious-- is that the kind of genius you are referring to?

Sean7phil (talk) 15:49, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The "Sting"

After my first edit to this article, User:Kaldari expressed a strong interest in having me banned, so I am raising an issue on the talk page before I do any more editing. The current version of the article says "As the publisher, Seigenthaler worked with Al Gore, then a reporter, on investigative stories about Nashville city council corruption in the early 1970s." This is not exactly the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. In fact, Gore and Seigenthaler -- according to the article that is presently sourced -- "concocted a sting operation to nail [Morris] Haddox, a young pharmacist widely viewed as an up-and-comer in local black political circles." Haddox was acquitted when he got his day in court, but the trial-by-press, in articles penned by Gore, was extremely damaging to him. So IMO, just saying that Gore and Seigenthaler were investigating corruption is a bit of a whitewash. --Tsunami Butler 21:19, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

The Morris Haddox story is only tangentally related to Seigenthaler. I don't see any reason to delve into it in this article. The sentence you're talking about is basically just a lead-in to Seigenthaler's relationship to Gore's political career, which is much more notable. Why should we elaborate on that one story when there are so many more important stories that Seigenthaler worked on directly that we barely mention here? It seems to me that the only reason you want to focus on it is that that particular story can be easily skewed into painting Gore and Seigenthaler as racists, although such accusations are obviously rediculous (as Seigenthaler was a significant Civil Rights activist). You should also know that the author of the article currently cited about the Morris Haddox story, E. Thomas Wood (who is probably one of the most well-respected historians in Nashville) is one of the editors of this article. I'm sure he is more qualified than any of us to know if that story was important to Seigenthaler's career and so far he hasn't mentioned anything about it. Personally, I think that paragraph is fine as it is, and I believe your interpretation of the Haddox story is heavily skewed by the right-wing anti-Gore news blog WorldNetDaily. Not that it really matters, but Haddox basically escaped going to jail through legal loopholes. The reason his reputation was ruined is because his illegal activities were exposed to the public, not because of a fictional racist smear campaign. Anyway, I think I've spent enough time feeding the troll. If you want to pick on Gore (as I doubt you actually care about Seigenthaler), you'll do better to try the Al Gore article. Kaldari 23:31, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
The story is unfortunately highly reminiscent of too many others, where politicians were targeted for "sting" operations because of ties to traditional Democratic constituencies -- I'm thinking ABSCAM, for example, or Marion Barry. I am therefore hesistant to brush it under the rug. The people of set these things up always say "but he was probably guilty, anyway." --Tsunami Butler 23:57, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Move protection

Even if the page doesn't require semi-protection, it should be at least move protected. There's no legitimate reason why the article would be moved, and there have been two vandalistic moves. Andjam 02:16, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

A valid concern. The article is now fully protected against moves. Just for shits and giggles, I move-protected this page as well. EVula // talk // ☯ // 02:25, 10 April 2007 (UTC)