Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bret Stephens

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Courcelles 00:05, 24 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Bret Stephens

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Lacks reliable independent secondary sources WP:RS to establish notability as required by WP:GNG and WP:BIO. Three of the 4 sources cited are primary sources from the WSJ where Stephens works, two of them trivial and one of them a column written by Stephens himself. The remaining source from the UJA is insufficiently independent and reliable to establish significant coverage in independent sources. Msnicki (talk) 15:05, 10 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How important are the awards he has been given?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 20:28, 10 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've been trying to figure that out. I'm not personally familiar with the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism but that of course means nothing. Googling reveals coverage each time the award is given but otoh, it's Fox News awarding the thing, so it's not very surprising they know how to get it into the news. Notice also that the award comes with an "internship" at one of the Fox properties; I'm having trouble deciding the significance of that, but it's not making me more impressed. For the sake of prestige, it's clearly in Fox News's interest that all their writers should have won awards, but this amounts to giving one to themselves.

Another way I thought of looking at it was to compare the notability of that prize within WP with the notability of, say, the Pulitzer Prize by comparing the "what links here" lists for the Breindel and Pulitzer prizes. Most of the links to the Breindel page are from the winners' pages; no surprise, there are lots more links to the Pulitzer. From that exercise, I'm pretty sure it's not like another Pulitzer.

I also looked at the list of past winners, noticed all the blue links and wondered if winning the Breindel seemed to be sufficient to make any of them notable. But if you follow the links, you'll notice that these other articles are much more heavily sourced and it's not hard to scan through the references to decide (in the cases I looked at, where I actually followed all the way through to click links to the sources themselves) that notability of these other subjects is likely easily established in all these other cases and has nothing to do with winning this award. So while I still can't really answer the question, I don't think we can take a presumption of notability just from this award. It is not like a Pulitzer. Msnicki (talk) 16:22, 15 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. —Msnicki (talk) 15:16, 10 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Awards and general coverage received reveal GNG notability.--brew crewer (yada, yada) 02:28, 15 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:34, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep on the basis of "Between 2002 and 2004 he was editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post," Ed-in-chief of such a major newspaper is notable DGG ( talk ) 04:26, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Where does it say that in the guidelines? Msnicki (talk) 14:00, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Answering my own question, it doesn't. It certainly doesn't mention it in the discussion of journalists at WP:CREATIVE. And from WP:Subjective importance, "A common misnomer about notability is that importance or uniqueness equals notability. But some things that are assumed to be important lack sources that are required by Wikipedia in order to meet the general notability guidelines or other inclusion criteria. Therefore, they are not worthy of being included. A subject may be the biggest, the best, or the most well-known of something. It may be possible on this basis to argue that it should obviously be included. But without a single reliable source to verify its existence or accuracy, there is no way it can be included." See also, later on the page at WP:POSITION, more specific discussion of the fact that simply holding a prestigious title is not sufficient. Msnicki (talk) 17:10, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. I would be inclined to keep just on the basis of being an editor-in-chief of a major newspaper. In this case we also have several professional awards. Passes WP:GNG and WP:BIO. Nsk92 (talk) 23:33, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How does it pass WP:GNG and WP:BIO? Can you cite any language on either of those pages that you believe is satisfied by this article? I don't think there is any. Msnicki (talk) 23:48, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Has anyone checked the books about the parent corp. & its owner? DGG ( talk ) 00:09, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - the past practice has been to keep well-known journalists, which while I am not sure that I agree, it is the consensus. See, for example, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pete Williams (journalist). Bearian (talk) 00:45, 23 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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 a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.