On Jun 25, 2007, at 8:30 PM, George Herbert wrote:
On 6/25/07, Anirudh anirudhsbh@gmail.com wrote:
- An incident which has coverage (in some cases front-page) in most
major US newspapers and newsmagazines rises to the level of notability under any rational interpretation of the word.
In many cases, yes. But actually in most cases, no.
Here's a very big routine news story today: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6238740.stm
Widely covered: http://news.google.com/news?tab=wn&client=firefox- a&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US% 3Aofficial&ncl=1117582711&hl=en
But I think we can all say that this study does not deserve an encyclopedia article. It's just a routine "filler" news story.
I think if you survey the front page of CNN or BBC or the New York Times each day, you will find that the vast majority of news stories are not about things which are encyclopedic in nature, and we end up not writing about most of them.
This may or may not have relevance in the EssJay notability debate, but just saying "it was in a lot of newspapers" doesn't really help settle the issue.
--Jimbo