Talk:The New York Review of Books

Very biased article

This article currently goes out of its way to present the NYRB as a high class and intellectual. Fair enough, all of those claims can be sourced and there are no reason they should not remain. At the same time, it's easy to find good RS sources calling it 'gutter journalism', 'sensationalist rag' and other less flattering epitaphs. In the interest of NPOV, surely both of these views should be noted, and be noted throughout the article. In other words, we can't have just a section of criticism in an article that praises the NYRB in all other sections. Jeppiz (talk) 12:22, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

I have read your comments above and I do not agree with you. If you have reliable sources could you please note them? Thanks. Jack1956 (talk) 19:13, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

I also disagree. This article is presented neutrally, with criticisms presented as well as praise. If you have reliable, published sources that critique the NYRB, by all means, present them. -- 65.78.11.228 (talk) 19:22, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Please stop adding the 'ad' tag to the page until a consensus has been reached to do so. You cannot put arbitrary tags on an article and then expect a consensus has to be reached to remove it. Consensus must agree to put it on. Jack1956 (talk)

I'll gladly add sources, but please note that "I do not agree" is not a reason to remove tags, so kindly refrain from disruptive behavior of that kind. As for the article reading as an ad, it contains both subjective unsourced praise and already the first paragraph claims it to be ""the premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English language." Apart from the fact that that is taken from a ten year old obituary, it's one person's subjective view, and hardly WP:DUE for the opening paragraph. I'm afraid you're both missing the main point, though. An article can be written like an advert even by using sources, so the use of sources is not the main concern. The issue here is whether the article gives a dispassionate and factual account of the NYRB or whether it tries to make a positive case for it. Jeppiz (talk) 20:09, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

I am surprised to read that reputable sources condemn the NYRB, but if Jeppiz has any relevant material from reliable sources to substantiate the claim s/he can of course add it. I also think the recently added tag on the article page was unsubstantiated and wilfully inappropriate and I support its removal. The article has been stable for a very long time, with a number of established editors contributing, and it strikes me as not quite right for a 'drive-by' addition to have been made like this by an uninvolved editor with no prior discussion. Good manners cost nothing, after all. Tim riley talk 20:12, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Tim riley. I see your point, but once again: my concern was more that the page is written like an ad. Even if every source we could find would be positive (and I'll take some time to look for more sourced), we should still try to present the subject dispassionately. Not negatively, but dispassionately. While I won't re-add the tag, I stand by what I said about the dubiousness of starting an article by claiming in the first paragraph that the subject is the best in the world. That's simply not encyclopaedic. Jeppiz (talk) 20:30, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Per WP:LEAD, the article's lead section gives an overview of the article, including what some of the most prominent critics have said about it. Wolfe's quote is not praise at all: By "radical chic", he was making a critique; his quote was selected for the Lead because it has frequently been quoted elsewhere. In any case, I think that the quotes selected for the lead give an overview of the criticism section that characterize the publication fairly well for readers. Compare The New York Times article's lead: it gives that newspaper's nickname: "The Gray Lady", calls it the national "newspaper of record" and gives its motto, "All the News That's Fit to Print". I do not see any unsourced praise in the article, but if you can identify any, I agree that it must be sourced. I must disagree that the article reads like an advertisement, and therefore, I believe that the tag is inappropriate. I bellieve that, based on the sources I have seen, the articles emphasis comports with our guidelines on WP:DUE. -- 65.78.11.228 (talk) 20:45, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

No worries, I perfectly respect your and Tim riley's opinions. I disagree to some extent, as I explained, but I'm not here to start an edit war. I'll look for more sources, come back in a few days and we can discuss further. Jeppiz (talk) 20:50, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

OK, thanks. -- 65.78.11.228 (talk) 20:58, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

I just read this article looking for bias or promotional writing, and I made little tweaks. WP:NPOV says that neutral writing "means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic." The article seems to me to present the topic fairly and proportionately, without editorializing. It lets the sources speak for themselves, and it cites numerous high-quality sources, giving views both positive, negative and mixed about the NYRB. I looked carefully at the Lead section, and I agree that it gives a fair, if perhaps too brief, overview of the article as a whole. Having said all that, I think that the Advertising tag is a pretty radical badge of opprobrium to put at the top of an article. I would only use it in an extreme situation where the article used lots of marketing speak. This article, on the other hand, contains mostly critiques, descriptions and analysis by news sources that are (or own) competitors of the NYRB. The heading of this comment seems quite misleading. -- UWS Guy (talk) 21:03, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

2001 letter

In the "Critical reaction" section an editor added a paragraph about a letter to the magazine in 2001. It is clearly a good faith addition, but it doesn't seem to me to be appropriate: the section is about the international reputation of the magazine, and it is surely disproportionate to single out a one-off instance of one person taking issue with a book review. There must have been hundreds of such cases over the years. I have removed it (commented out) for now, but would welcome comments here for or against restoring it. Tim riley talk 08:48, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

I agree with User:Tim riley. In the more than half century of the Review, there have been numerous letters complaining about one or another viewpoint taken by writers in its pages, just as would be the case with essentially all publications that contain essays and other opinion pieces. To mention this one instance would not only be an WP:UNDUE (WP:BALASP) addition, but it would be an invitation to begin to accumulate numerous similar instances, -- Ssilvers (talk) 13:53, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

I agree with the two editors above; it would be unreasonable and unnecessary to single out one letter out of the hundreds or thousands that must have been received. Jack1956 (talk) 14:03, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

I agree also, and see the consensus, have removed it. DGG ( talk ) 06:26, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Lead

Since I notice that one of the quotes I removed had been removed, and then restored, previously, I thought it would be prudent to start a talk discussion about their removal. Now the Tom Wolfe quote is a highly contentious allusion to a concept of Wolfe's own that clearly doesn't belong in the first sentences of the page. Someone said it "balanced" the two complimentary sentences it followed; well those two sentences were on the other hand inappropriately complimentary to the Review. Since none of these three sentences is very informative at all about this publication I deleted them outright, but if anyone really wants them to be there maybe there's a place for them in the Critical reception (?) section. S00D4W4T3R (talk) 02:32, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

I’m not convinced they don’t belong there, and they seem to sum up the general impression of the Review in a rather effective way. I’m certainly not sure I’d describe the contents of Wolfe’s quote as ‘highly contentious’, but your mileage obviously differs on that.

On a separate note, S00D4W4T3R, please don't mark edits like this as "minor". A "minor edit" is only to be used when it is a superficial change being made. Deleting a cited quote from a lead is not minor. 2A00:23C7:2B86:9800:3911:184A:50BA:FA8E (talk) 08:44, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree with the IP, above. The two highly contrasting views of the review now restored give a good overview. I can't understand S00D4W4T3R's characterisation of Tom Wolfe's comment as "complimentary" to the publication. It was not, surely, intended as a compliment. And I wonder if S00D4W4T3R has read the whole article: the suggestion that Wolfe's comment and that of James Atlas should "maybe" be in the critical reception section rather overlooks the fact that they are there already, as is right and proper under WP:LEAD. But – minor point of detail - the lead and the main text differ in saying in which publication Atlas made his comment: the two occurrences are cited to two different sources, and though both appear correct, it looks a trifle odd; it might be as well to cite both to the New York article, which has Atlas's by-line. I also agree with the immediately preceding editor that marking substantial deletions as a "minor" edit is not good practice, being thoroughly misleading. Tim riley talk 09:06, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

I also disagree with the deletions. This material is a good summary or overview, per WP:LEAD, of the body of the article, and the Wolfe quote is probably the most famous thing that anyone every wrote about the Review. It also has the advantage of neatly balancing any positive impressions of the paper with its snarkily critical tone. As far as the Schudel quote, it is not the same as the Atlas quote, but the two support each other in terms of showing that this is how critics perceive the Review. -- Ssilvers (talk) 13:57, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

I was obviously saying the Esquire quote is complimentary, not the Tom Wolfe quote. And unlike Although I've read his article, if someone hasn't and doesn't know what "radical chic" is, the Tom Wolfe quote is utterly unhelpful to them, except if they then try to learn what radical chic is—which I think anyone would agree is not am appropriate part of their original endeavor to learn more about the NYRB. Anyway I was and am just immediately struck by how irregular these three sentences are relative to how "leads" normally go. I don't think the fact that the Tom Wolfe quote is the most famous thing someone has said about the NYRB justifies putting it in the lead at all, since the NYRB, on the other hand, is not only known because of what Tom Wolfe said about it. S00D4W4T3R (talk) 17:44, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Also, the second sentence of the lead is mostly borrowed from the only editorial that appeared in the Review, and I think shows a certain degree of bias in e.g. its lofty wording ("inspired"). It should be cited if you really want to keep your friends' edits. S00D4W4T3R (talk) 17:58, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Finally, looking at your edit histories it's pretty obvious, from the fact that the IP above has barely done anything besides edit talk pages and agree with both of Tim riley and Ssilvers, that one of you is using it to give a false appearance of consensus when protecting your pet edits. Do you really think that's appropriate? S00D4W4T3R (talk) 19:08, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

I’m amazed when ‘new’ editors know how to match edit histories to give a false appearance of a new account when protecting your alternative accounts. Do you really think that's appropriate? 2A00:23C7:2B86:9800:A9AE:5E50:AA75:E3E5 (talk) 21:48, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Well the joke's on you because I don't even know what that means, or how to properly reply to a topic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by S00D4W4T3R (talk • contribs) 22:19, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

There’s no joke here, and I’m rather disappointed that just because three people have disagreed with you, you think it’s ok to start smearing them. 2A00:23C7:2B86:9800:A9AE:5E50:AA75:E3E5 (talk) 23:25, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, that's pretty nasty, as well as plain wrong. Leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth. Tim riley talk 23:41, 17 January 2022 (UTC)