One incorrect story in one newspaper from 1912 doesn't invalidate the entire industry. Newspapers are like any other sources, and we should preferably have several, but as a whole they are rather decent.

To answer the question, I don't think newspapers are particularly reliable sources. I've seen them get things wrong way too often. Most recently the so called "Essjay incident" has brought to light how easy it is to get completely made up stuff into even a respectable newspaper. Before that we've seen time and again when Jimmy has complained that newspapers have misquoted him or otherwise gotten their facts wrong, and even before that I remember him commenting when Wikipedia published information about how much he spent on bandwidth that the figure was provided by him and wasn't fact checked (so he could have easily made the number up). That said, I don't think we could possibly throw out the use of newspapers altogether. Maybe a rule that a fact which is substantiated only by newspapers should be attributed? Even that might be too harsh, but I certainly think one should lean toward attribution when using a newspaper as a source. And I disagree with Oskar that the number of newspapers makes much of a difference. Multiple newspapers often have the exact same misinformation, due to associated press stories and other borrowings (legal and illegal). I remember the police killing of the subway bombing suspect as one prominent incident where the newspapers were getting the story blatantly wrong, and Wikipedia adopted much of the misinformation from them, reporting some of the misinformation as fact and without attribution. Along those lines, and agreeing with Rory, that's one reason I suggested at the time that we should leave the reporting of breaking news to Wikinews. Immediately correct anything obviously made incorrect (Lisa Nowak is a NASA astronaut), but leave the details to time and/or Wikinews. But that's all just my opinion. Anthony On 3/26/07, daniwo59(a)aol.com <daniwo59(a)aol.com> wrote: