Talk:Bruce Fairchild Barton/Archives/2013

Critique

In comparing the American National Biography piece with the Wikipedia article I have found the latter biography to be less credible. Though both articles are relatively short, the American National Biography piece is much more in depth and informative than the Wikipedia article. The Wikipedia article lacks the detail and organization seen in the text “Barton, Bruce Fairchild,” written by Dennis Wepman and published in American National Biography.

To begin with, Wepman includes much more background information into where Barton comes from and his early life. This allows the reader to have insight into the subjects’ upbringing. For Example, he goes into the subjects’ early family life and how Barton’s father was a Congressionalist Minister, and how he held the post for over two decades, including information about his father being an author, this is relevant information as it gives insight into Barton’s inspiration to start a career as a writer. Wepman also provides insight on Barton’s mothers’ background also, including information about her being an elementary school teacher when he was a child. By including this information, Wepman offers a better view of Barton’s early life as opposed to the wiki article, which only touched on Barton’s adult life. Wepman also gives a good account of Barton’s teenage years also, elaborating on his early journalistic days, serving as the editor of his High School Newspaper. Barton also helped merchandise his uncles maple syrup company in his free time; facts like these are unmentioned in the Wikipedia article.

Barton enrolled in his fathers Alma matter of Berea College in the fall of 1903, and later transferred to Amherst College in Massachusetts. Wepman helps the reader understand the hardships that Barton encountered during his college years. Barton was forced to sell pots and pans during his years at college to pay his tuition. He later graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelors degree from Amherst in 1907, and was voted “Most Likely to Succeed”. During this time however, his work in school did little to pay the bills. He found it hard to find a good job, and took many small unrewarding jobs in order to live.

During this time Wepman explains how Barton became the editor of 2 small newspapers in Chicago, they both failed within a year. These failures taught him a lot about the publishing world and he used these skills to become the assistant sales manager for publisher P.F. Collier & Son in New York. He remained with them for only 3 years. In 1913, Barton met Esther Randall who he would later merry and have children with.. Around this time, Barton’s advertising career began to take off, and he created his first advertising campaigns, including one for the Harvard Classics called “The five foot shelf of books” about a man named “Dr. Eliot” of Harvard who could give his students the elements of a liberal education in fifteen minutes a day. 1914 would mark the year that Barton would become the editor of Every Week a magazine published by Crowell Publications. No different than his other magazine ventures, this one failed in 1918, but helped him establish a reputation as a well-known writer of inspirational pieces.

As the year wore on Barton applied for and was rejected for military service because the fact that he was his parents only child. He later took a job for the United War Work agency. There, he met future business partners Roy S. Durstine and Alex F. Osborne. The following year, they collectively took out a $10,000 bank loan and formed Barton, Durstine & Osborne. Wepman helps establish a connection between Barton’s early hardships and how his career grew over the years as a writer and ambition as a businessman. The company later merged with George Batten Co. and became Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborne, which went on to become the 4th largest advertising company in the world by 1928.

The sources cited in the American National Biography piece are much more extensive and accurate because of the fact that they came from actual literature and biographical writings including an obituary in the New York Times rather than the Internet. Wepman does a great job of covering the many aspects of the life of Bruce Fairchild Barton. Meanwhile the wiki article is very thrown together and not many reliable sources were cited in the making of the wiki article, they don’t go into his personal life much and in fact only cover small bits of his career. The Wiki article could have done a better job of elaborating on Barton’s earlier failures as an editor, and magazine author. The wiki article was very bad with explaining his early career and early life altogether. Some sections of the article are very short and miss key facts that the American National Biography piece included. The organization and content of the wiki article could have been better considering Barton is a modern figure. The “Donation Request Letter” at the end of the wiki article only served to confuse me because of how randomly it was placed on the page. No explanation was given on the purpose of the letter being there.