<<In a message dated 1/7/2009 4:30:53 PM Pacific Standard Time, cbeckhorn@fastmail.fm writes:

* Building the majority of an article from newspaper sources is not a reliability problem at the level of the individually-sourced pieces of information. However, it's exactly the type of synthesis of primary sources that has been decried for academic articles. And, in many cases, it suffers from the bias of newsmedia to cover things that will sell papers in much greater depth than topics that are of less popular interest. >>

As I've been pointing out, in bits and pieces, we don't have an alternative for BLPs. There simply is not some highly regarded, repository of veracity out there for this type of article. What we have is reliable secondary sources, and realiable primary source, which should and can be used in conjunction in a proper mix.

I don't agree that newspaper articles are necessarily primary sources. If in a new story about Jane Fonda, they happen to mention that her father Henry was in such and such movie, that's not a primary source for that fact. It's obviously secondary. Just the fact that something appears in a newspaper or news magazine does not make it a primary source for that something.

The primary source is the first fixed-media product which has stated that fact. The primary sources for Henry Fonda having been born in Omaha is *a* newspaper story, but subsequent mentions of that fact are not again primary, they are secondary. Apparently relying on previously published biographical details.

A report on Peter Fonda's arrest may rely on the underlying published primary sources of his court papers. They may rely on an interview with him, which may or may be published. They may rely on some reporter, watching a filmed interview of him on the Tomorrow show. We don't necessarily know from just reading the newspaper whether they are reporting something as a primary source or secondary, unless they clearly state or infer that somehow. Such as, "I ask him blah blah blah and he said blah blah blee"

That would make it primary. Jane Fonda's memoir is primary for what she herself experienced. But she says "I read in my father's biography where he said blah blah blah". Her repeating it and commenting upon it, does not make it again primary (provided it was in the first place). It makes it secondary.

Again, primary statements in sources, are those which are appearing in a fixed media for the first time.

Will Johnson

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