Talk:Joseph Medill

Illinois Low‑importance

	Illinois portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Illinois, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Illinois on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.IllinoisWikipedia:WikiProject IllinoisTemplate:WikiProject IllinoisWikiProject Illinois articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Chicago High‑importance

	Chicago portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Chicago, which aims to improve all articles or pages related to Chicago or the Chicago metropolitan area.ChicagoWikipedia:WikiProject ChicagoTemplate:WikiProject ChicagoChicago articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Biography

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles

Journalism High‑importance

	Journalism portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Journalism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of journalism on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.JournalismWikipedia:WikiProject JournalismTemplate:WikiProject JournalismJournalism articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

POV and accuracy disputed

I dispute the statement

Medill was a racist who opposed slavery. In one editorial, Medill espoused putting strychnine or arsenic in the food of unemployed citizens.

on grounds that:

The term racist is POV. Being part of an encyclopedia, this article should include factual information about Medill's views, and the reader left to form his or her conclusions.
The claim that Medill espoused poisoning vagrants is an old chestnut that never seems to die, and which is based on distortions made by enemies of Medill and the Chicago Tribune. The facts pertinent to both sides of this claim should either be backed up with factual data, or the statement removed altogether.

The claim is based on an item that did appear in the Chicago Tribune during the 1880s as reply to a correspondent, wherein a Tribune reporter made what was a wholly improper "suggestion" about means to solve residents' problems with vagrants. Detractors of the Tribune have claimed that it was editorial policy, while the paper's supporters have asserted that editorial policy was always clearly labeled as such, and the item in question was not.

I am probably in a good position to document the incident and rewrite the piece with NPOV, but for now I'm flagging the article, lest anyone not familiar with the indident assume the statement to be neutral and factual.

— JonRoma 21:02, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

McCormick connection

Kate married diplomat Robert Sanderson McCormick. He was the nephew of Cyrus McCormick, founder of the Chicago Times and Medill's long-time adversary.

Hard to tell where this comes from, since there are no citations. But my sources all say Cyrus ran a company building farm machinery that became International Harvester. Should be fixed. W Nowicki (talk) 00:46, 30 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]