Talk:John Seigenthaler/GA1

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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GA Reassessment

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As part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles' Project quality task force, all old good articles are being re-reviewed to ensure that they meet current good article criteria (as detailed at WP:WIAGA.) I have determined that this one definitely does not; it was probably only nom'd in response to the who bio incident, but speaking of shoddy, unverified content...

• All the following content is unsourced, or else its source is unclear.
  • Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Seigenthaler is the oldest of eight siblings. He attended Father Ryan High School and served in the U.S. Air Force from 1946 to 1949. After leaving the service, Seigenthaler was hired at The Tennessean.
  • While covering a story in the mid-1950s, Seigenthaler met singer Dolores Watson. Giving up dreams of a musical career, Watson married Seigenthaler in 1955, and later gave birth to the couple's only child, John Michael Seigenthaler, who went on to become an anchor with NBC News. The elder Seigenthaler's brother, Thomas Seigenthaler, was the founder of Seigenthaler Public Relations.
  • Those skills weren't immediately evident, (he was lectured by an editor about his first article), but he was able to establish himself on the staff among heavy competition that included future standout journalists David Halberstam and Tom Wicker.
  • He first gained prominence in November 1953 when he tracked down the former Thomas C. Buntin and his wife.
  • Frustrated by the leadership of Tennessean publisher Silliman Evans, Jr., Seigenthaler resigned in 1960 to serve as an administrative assistant to incoming Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. On April 21, 1961, Seigenthaler was the only other Justice Department figure to witness a meeting between Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Seigenthaler's friendship with Kennedy became one of the focal points of Jimmy Hoffa's bid to shift his jury tampering trial from Nashville. Citing "one-sided, defamatory" coverage from the newspaper, Hoffa's lawyers were able to get Seigenthaler to admit he personally wanted Hoffa convicted. However, the journalist noted that he hadn't conveyed those sentiments to his reporters. Hoffa's lawyers gained a minor victory when the trial was moved to Chattanooga in a change of venue, but Hoffa was nonetheless convicted in 1964 after a 45-day trial.
  • The following year, Seigenthaler led a fight for access to the Tennessee state senate chamber in Nashville after a resolution was passed revoking the floor privileges of Tennessean reporter Bill Kovach. The action came after Kovach had refused to leave a committee hearing following a call for executive session.
  • In December 1966, Seigenthaler and Richard Goodwin represented the Kennedy family when controversy developed about historian William Manchester's book about the John F. Kennedy assassination, The Death of a President. Seigenthaler had read an early version of the book, which led to Jacqueline Kennedy threatening a lawsuit over inaccurate and private statements in the publication.
  • Moments after a victory in the California primary, Kennedy was shot by an assassin and died on June 6, 1968. Seigenthaler would serve as one of the pallbearers at his funeral, and later co-edited the book An Honorable Profession: A Tribute to Robert F. Kennedy.
  • Remaining focused on the cause of civil rights, Seigenthaler then supported Tennessee Bishop Joseph Aloysius Durick in 1969 during the latter's contentious fight to end segregation, a stance that outraged many in the community who still believed in the concept.
  • On February 8, 1973, Seigenthaler was promoted to publisher of the Tennessean, after Amon Carter Evans was named president of Tennessean Newspaper, Inc.
  • In February 1976, Seigenthaler contacted Gore at home to inform him that U.S. Representative Joe L. Evins was not running for re-election. Gore decided to resign from the paper and drop out of Vanderbilt University Law School, beginning his political career by entering the race for Tennessee's 4th congressional district, a seat previously held by Albert Gore, Sr., his father.
  • Seigenthaler announced his retirement in December 1991 from The Tennessean, just months after he made a similar announcement concerning his tenure at USA Today.
  • Seigenthaler currently hosts a book review program on Nashville public television station WNPT, called A Word on Words, and chairs the selection committees for the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation's Profiles in Courage Award and the RFK Memorial's Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.
• Problems with tone and weasel/POV wording, examples including "The bizarre case". The entire thing comes off as a bit of a puff piece, and I think some of the extraneous "heroic" details (like saving a guy from suicide) could probably be lost.
• The article suffers from a lack of focus, compounded by one or two-sentence groupings that do not adequately convey ideas. These need to be fleshed out into real full-sized paragraphs, merged together, or cut.
• How does File:Young seigenthaler.jpg meet WP:NFCC? Currently it does not even have a fair use rationale as required.
  • It does have a fair use rationale and the rationale explains how it meets WP:NFCC. Are you looking at a different image? Kaldari (talk) 00:39, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
    • Ah, missed it somehow. Not sure it's still that strong, considering it can be replaced by free images... Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 18:07, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I am placing the article on hold for one week pending improvements. Keep me appraised of development or ask questions here on this page. Thanks, Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 21:18, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

• The main problem with this article is that many of the most notable things about Seigenthaler are barely discussed and the focus is mostly on his early years in the newspaper business. His work on first amendment issues is extensive, for example, and we barely mention anything about it. Kaldari (talk) 00:39, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
  • That could be an issue too, but I have no knowledge of Seigenthaler beyond the wiki-fracas. If you think comprehensiveness is a concern, then it is. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 18:07, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, since not much got done in the time period allotted, I'm just going to delist now. I'll try and strip out the unsourced statements above when I have time; to anyone who wants to renominate it at WP:GAN, I would recommend addressing the above issues. Comments, take it to my talk page. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 14:34, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.