Talk:Jerry Heller

Untitled
Is "Ethnicity" a standard inclusion in the sidebar description for biographies? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:44:500:2316:C9C9:A4E4:6639:D9F2 (talk) 14:44, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Biased
This article is biased and only says good stuff about him. It should at least mention that he wasn't giving all members of NWA the money they deserved and is at least partially responsible for them breaking up.

There should be some mention of "No Vaseline." It is mentioned repeatedly in Heller's bio, even. Ugly chapter but necessary. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.5.195.39 (talk) 00:18, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

I eliminated some unsourced claims. Heller is not on the faculty directory at USC. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.33.204.117 (talk) 15:39, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

What about the jdl stuff? Where is the sources for that? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.148.78.4 (talk) 16:49, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

I changed this sentence "In the mid-1980s he generated many record deals in New Wave and Punk with acts like Michel'le, World Class Wreckin' Cru, J.J. Fad The D.O.C., Egyptian Lover and L.A. Dream Team." because none of those are new wave or punk groups, they're r&b and rap groups. You're welcome. 56.0.84.23 (talk) 15:03, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Issues of bias, caused by content of article being created by subject's employees
So I was reading this article and came across some seriously NPOV sentences. I removed the sentence saying that "His musical vision continued to demonstrate its capacity to be nothing short of astounding". I also slapped "citation required" tags on a couple of unsourced, rather ambitious claims, such as: "Jerry Heller was the moving force and marketing genius behind the emergence and crossover of rap music to the record buying public" and "Jerry Heller is arguably dollar-for-dollar the most successful record company executive of the entire Rap Era". But the whole text remains tinged with issues of bias, and I was curious about how come, so I delved into the editing history of this article.

Turns out that the current text was put in place by user Jeffreypritz, whose only Wikipedia contributions are to this article. Some Googling reveals a page about a Jeffrey Pritz that is currently empty, but the version Google still has cached has him writing that he is a "creative and award-winning designer with a 12-year pedigree of innovative, results-driven designs," whose "creative values have served many in the entertainment industry like Steven Spielberg, Stan Winston, Sam and Lou Arkoff, Jerry Heller [etc]" (screenshot). Moreover, the publicity photo accompanying this article is, with the author of the photo listed as Jeffrey Pritz.

This would not be the first time someone being paid by Heller is editing his Wikipedia page. Digging further into the edit history reveals a number of edits by a user called Theweblady, whose contributions were also all limited to the subject of Heller. She started off by reverting the deletion of material deemed "advertising, POV and unsourced" by another Wikipedia user. She labeled that deletion "vandalism" and defended reinstating the content by saying: "This is the version that Jerry Heller has approved. If you have questions, please contact me as i am his webmaster." She continued to keep reverting the edits of other users who came in to delete the problematic content, even after one of those users explained: "rv large amount of unsourced content. Subjects don't get to approve their articles". After the fourth revert of her content, she gave up, but a few months later a non-logged in user added the whole text again, only to be reverted immediately.

There is in principle nothing wrong with anyone adding information, whoever they are paid by, but they have to adhere to Wikipedia standards. The way in which Theweblady explained her work in separate messages, however, suggested some problems in that regard, for example when she summarized the deletion of POV and unsourced content by editors as follows: "I keep having editors come by and change what the subject has corrected. I need to know how to get them to stop changing the content that has been corrected by the living person". At least, though, she declared her business interest in the subject, unlike the anonymous account that tried reinstating her content, and unlike Jeffrey Pritz later on, who repopulated the page with Heller-produced/approved text after another editor deemed the whole article to fail WP:GNG.

This article should not serve as or read like a PR text. Please keep an eye on this article and any new reverts or additions that seem to be intended only to delete possibly unflattering content, or to add unsourced and NPOV content flattering to Mr. Heller. — Preceding unsigned comment added by No-itsme (talk • contribs) 23:42, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Teacher at USC and UCLA?
I noticed that from 2006 (or earlier) until 2010, Heller's article claimed without citation that he taught a class on music business at USC and UCLA before an unregistered user deleted it for unknown reasons. So far, I can't find any evidence that Heller was ever on the faculty of either college, but I'm still curious if there is any truth to this claim. BenStein69 (talk) 16:21, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Cause of Death
He died from a heart attack according to sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.38.189.88 (talk) 19:16, 3 September 2016 (UTC)