Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Benton Review

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. Nomination withdrawn; thank you MSJapan (listening to David Sylvian right now--what are the odds?), and a big Midwestern-style WOOHOO to Nyttend. Drmies (talk) 00:37, 25 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Benton Review[edit]

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Unsourced NN local paper. WP:ENN. Notability not asserted, Prodded and deprodded in the past, I sent it to CSD as unremarkable, and it was declined because of length of existence satisfied A7. Still doesn't change the fact that it's a local paper with no particular claim to notability. MSJapan (talk) 05:28, 17 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Journalism-related deletion discussions. ^BE _CK ^Y _SA ^{Y L}E _S 09:11, 17 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Indiana-related deletion discussions. ^BE _CK ^Y _SA ^{Y L}E _S 09:11, 17 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of News media-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 18:59, 17 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep in recognition of WP:RECENTISM. I found this 1936 mention in a paper two states away touting the subject's "wide reputation." I suspect if we where having this discussion in 1936, it wouldn't be difficult to establish notability. But, if we're collectively too lazy to do anything more than a web search for an institution that apparently originated in 1875, we should keep it for now. ~Kvng (talk) 23:07, 17 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Reply - Confirmation bias, and totally off-track. The article subject is not being mentioned "two states away." The paper referred to in the article is the Scott County Democrat, not the Benton Democrat. That's a different paper; the Benton paper is the combination of two papers named Fowler, not Scott County. Now, since the source cited is a paper from Southeast Missouri (called The Southeast Missourian), I did a bit more looking around. The "Benton" mentioned in the source is likely the town of Benton, Missouri, located in Scott County, Missouri, (unsurprisingly) located in southeast Missouri. Scott County is repeatedly mentioned in this paper in several other articles. The Benton Democrat (from its article) does not serve a "Scott County". It serves five counties in NW Indiana, and before someone asks, Scott County, Indiana is located in SE Indiana. So the assertion is incorrect, and this is just local news unrelated to the article topic. MSJapan (talk) 17:51, 18 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Worldcat reports holdings in two libraries in Indiana.

[1] shows holdings from 1883 to 1891

Manta reports that the current business name is "Benton Review Newspaper".

A Google search on ["Benton Review" site:news.google.com/newspapers] returns a hit for a 1959 "Benton Review Pub Co.", which could be a search term to identify an older business name.

This is sufficient evidence to establish that the topic has attracted the attention of the world at large over a period of time (WP:N nutshell). Further, topics about reliable sources are valuable to editors, so have a low threshold for inclusion. Unscintillating (talk) 03:01, 20 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Really? So two libraries (because that Stjos search replicates WorldCat, where Mishawka already is listed) in the same state that the paper is published in have it (and those libraries are <20 miles apart from each other per WorldCat), no other library anywhere else in the world has it, and one of the two only has 2 years of microfiche [2] from 1875-77, the other has microfiche from 1883-1891, and it's notable? That is a pretty low bar. Also, please do not conflate the business with the product; the article is not about the business. MSJapan (talk) 06:12, 20 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've hung around WT:V enough to know that the text you bolded has zero weight for whether or not a source is verifiable. If it is published, and the only copy is in a museum under a pyramid in Egypt, it is verifiable. Since there is no notability criteria like "Worldcat only reports two libraries with holdings", you'd have to explain how such a restriction improves the encyclopedia, and since a failure of WP:N allows the topic to remain a redirect and covered in the encyclopedia at Fowler, IN, it is still not a deletion argument. I wonder if you've checked Worldcat for the other three potential titles here, Benton Democrat, Fowler Leader, and the Fowler Republican. Unscintillating (talk) 01:58, 22 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You didn't talk about verifiability, and that's not the question here. The paper exists. You stated, however, that "the world at large has noticed" and cited notability. The "world at large" has to be greater than a 20 mile radius in the paper's home state. WorldCat is fine for existence, but existence is not notability, and my point is that it's not a notable paper, as I stated in my nom. MSJapan (talk) 02:44, 22 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@MSJapan: Would you mind citing some policy or guideline that the places that reference the Benton Review must be non-local? Thanks, p b p 03:02, 22 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We're going ever further down the spiral of irrelevant minutiae. WorldCat is not a citation source; it's a library holdings catalog. It verifies existence, not "coverage" or notability, or anything else. What is required is a third-party source that discusses the topic, and that has not as yet been found. The fact that the paper is held in two libraries does not establish notability, because that isn't saying anything about the paper. WP:GNG is pretty clear on what is required, and one of those things is reliable third-party sources that have significant coverage. So where are they? MSJapan (talk) 03:21, 22 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I found an 1877 list of newspapers at University of North Texas that lists two more Fowler newspapers from the 1870s. At least one of these is listed in WorldCat, The Fowler era. Unscintillating (talk) 04:48, 23 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's all very thin. MSJapan makes a decent case for deletion, and Unscintillating can't seem to latch on to a decent argument for keeping it. Of course there is no "lower bar" for newspapers. However, I would argue that a local paper is important, and that the sources (I added a few) agree that the thing existed. I found some circulation numbers, and I think that altogether we should let this scrape by, maybe with a little IAR flavor. Weak keep, therefore. Oh, Nyttend, this isn't your state but it's not far--do you have anything to add? Thanks, Drmies (talk) 01:58, 24 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
~~Weak~~ Keep. I've always had a hard time with notability for publications: we use them all the time, but it's so often hard to find sources about them. As is, I have access to the newspaper itself through newspaperarchive.com, but not to anything about this newspaper. The newspaper guide from Indiana University Libraries says to consult John W. Miller's Indiana Newspaper Bibliography, which provides historical accounts of all Indiana newspapers published between 1804 and 1980. It's not available online, even with a subscription, so you should have contacted me a week ago, when I was in Bloomington; I could have gone on campus and consulted a printed copy :-) I'm going to advocate keeping because of the recommendation for this book from IU Libraries (three years of grad work there makes me highly confident that they know what they're talking about), ~~but only weak because I've not seen the source in person~~. Nyttend (talk) 04:44, 24 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
PS, quick note — newspaperarchive.com lists it as Fowler Benton Review (the URL will work only if you, too, have an active user account with IU), so perhaps that will work as an alternative search term. Nyttend (talk) 04:49, 24 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
PPS, History of Benton County, Indiana (1987), History of Benton County, Indiana (1930), and Annals of Benton County (1925) likely have coverage of this publication, since county histories (especially in sparsely populated rural counties, and Benton's one of the least populous in the state) routinely give significant coverage to the local press. And finally, Counties of Warren, Benton, Jasper and Newton, Indiana : historical and biographical (1883) does give coverage to what was then an eight-year-old publication; page 291 provides a discussion of the newspaper's history. Striking my "weak" because I'm indeed seeing the kind of coverage that's useful for this kind of thing; I have no reason to doubt that this is a notable publication. By the way, Drmies, I know a little about Benton County; four of the five images at National Register of Historic Places listings in Benton County, Indiana are mine :-) Nyttend (talk) 05:02, 24 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it's certainly looking better, although I feel that the historical info of the business is more on the side of WP:V, and I'm vacillating on whether that meets WP:CORPDEPTH. My general thought is that notability shouldn't be a struggle to meet, and if it is, then maybe the subject isn't notable. It is, however, sometimes a matter of finding the right source (which is a burden of proof that ideally should be met before an article is created).

Nevertheless, as we don't seem to have a bar, something is better than nothing, and these are secondary sources, so we're heading in the right direction. Is there any chance of actually getting the info out of the Indiana Newspaper Bibliography? If so, I would think that would be substantial enough to be considered significant coverage, and I'd be willing to withdraw the nom on the honor system. MSJapan (talk) 06:05, 24 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I know another editor who's in Bloomington, User:Vmenkov (he attended some IU meetup events), and asked him if he'd help by checking some or all of these books; he replied I'll try to take a look at these books some time next week. 12:42, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Works for me, then. Withdraw. MSJapan (talk) 17:50, 24 June 2016 (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.