Talk:The Stranger (newspaper)

Iraq War
It is certainly notable that The Stranger supported the Iraq War, but in the absence of evidence that the Bush administration was directly "emboldened" by The Stranger's position we should refrain from including this claim. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.112.31.99 (talk) 08:12, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

During the run-up to the Iraq war, the Bush administration was emboldened by an editorial endorsement of the war in The Stranger." [8] The citation here is The Stranger. Is there any independent evidence that this bold claim of embodiment actually occurred anywhere within the Bush Administration? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eddorn (talk • contribs) 20:32, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

A. Birch Steen
Ombudsman A. Birch Steen is almost certainly a joke, no more real than Private Eye ' s E. Jarvis Thribb. His voice is that of a stodgy older man who does not like the paper at all and makes remarks (on the table of contents page, lately) like, "For those uninterested in the news section (i.e., the bulk of Seattle), here's rundown: an article on Mayor Nickels, an article on Howard Dean, an article on a neighborhood, and an article on the monorail. In other words, the news section from last week, the week before that, the week before that...." or "Savage Love: A lazy column this week, as Savage is apparently on vacation. So why didn't he turn in a standard "greatest hits" column? Perhaps because there are no greatest hits to be found...." -- Jmabel | Talk 07:44, Nov 28, 2004 (UTC)

Music Section
Okay, I realize that the Stranger is famous partially because of its support for local bands, but do we really need that behemoth of a list?Atinoda 05:48, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

PUSA Connection
I'd like to note that the song "Stranger" by The Presidents of the United States of America is completely about this newspaper. Not sure where this would fit in the article though. --Sirkha 16:26, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Might go well after that remark about the paper as chronicler of the music scene, maybe with a transition like "In at least one case, the music scene has chronicled The Stranger. - Jmabel | Talk 04:42, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Tell us how "Stranger" is completely about The Stranger. Tell us how these lyrics here are about The Stranger. They don't even seem to be about Seattle. -Ashley Pomeroy 19:07, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Looks to me like the answer is "not at all". - Jmabel | Talk 07:54, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't go so far to say that the article is completely about the paper, but it CLEARLY takes a nudge from the "I Saw You" section of the newspaper. If you don't happen to read The Stranger, the pieces in the I Saw You section start with "You: (description) Me: (description)" —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 172.192.240.82 (talk) 06:49, 10 February 2007 (UTC).

Paul Constant
Under Controversies, the article currently says: "Paul Constant, a staff writer for The Stranger, has written exclusively about the 9/11 truth movement." This isn't true, as can be seen from this page, which lists only his feature articles for the Stranger, which are on a variety of topics. If the intended meaning is that the article he wrote for Utne Reader was exclusive to that magazine, that is also untrue, since it is identical to an article appearing in the Stranger here. 71.35.99.78 (talk) 02:34, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, golly, it should have read "extensively" instead of "exclusively." I'll get that fixed for ya, buddy.  Thanks for the heads up on that one. - Michael J Swassing (talk) 03:23, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

You know, that graf doesn't even belong. FIrstly, how do you provide sources showing that he has written "extensively about" something? What's the criteria? Second... even accepting that statement is true, why is it "a controversy involving the Stranger?" Is reporting on fringe movements itself controversial? Sez who? - Keith D. Tyler &para; 16:54, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Now that you put it that way, it really is reporting about a controversy as opposed to being involved in a controversy. I'll remove it altogether. - Michael J Swassing (talk) 17:45, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * We probably should create a new section for reporting which first appeared in The Stranger and then was later published in wider venue. There is that article by Paul Constant, quite a bit of work by Dan Savage, a number of articles by Eli Sanders in the New York Times and other publications. I'm sure there are others. - Michael J Swassing (talk) 17:51, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Brendan Kiley
Brendan Kiley to Receive the WACDL's Champion of Justice Award for His Reporting in The Stranger: probably worth a mention in the History section, though perhaps we should wait until someone other than the Stranger itself reports the story. As it says, "one of only two journalists in the organization's 25-year history to receive their annual Champion of Justice Award." - Jmabel &#124; Talk 03:55, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
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Sourcing for 'left-wing' characterization
Hi Dennis, I'm not sure if I'm doing this right, but I'll give this a try. I saw your comment (and then your reversion back to the prior version) of my addition of "left-wing" to describe The Stranger. I believe you objected because there was no sourcing or reference to back up that description.

I have a question and a comment. First, how would one find an objective source or reference (besides the publication itself) describing its content as "left-wing"? What would satisfy this requirement? That seems problematic. No one would seriously challenge the assertion that The Stranger is a left-wing publication...but again, I'm looking for guidance on what objective sourcing or reference would be required to make that description acceptable to Wikipedia standards.

Second, I checked for consistency on your request, so I looked up Ben Shapiro (as an example) to see how he was described. I see that he was described as a "conservative" and yet there was no reference or sourcing when that adjective was included to describe his political leanings (which is accurate to state he is a conservative). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Justthefactsnow (talk • contribs) 16:50, 17 October 2018 (UTC) (Post above copied from my talk page.) --Dennis Bratland (talk) 18:19, 17 October 2018 (UTC)


 * I brought your comment over here so that the other editors on this article can comment too.What constitutes a source is at WP:Identifying reliable sources. Sources must be independent, verifiable, published -- not necessarily online or in print -- and fact-checked. Not original research. Citing sources explains more on how to cite.Characterizing a publication as "left wing" is complicated, because that is relative, an opinion. Not a fact. What we write in Wikipedia's voice -- see WP:WikiVoice -- should be factual, not judgemental. It could be disputed, but only by fringe points of view -- facts are things the responsible, established mainstream is in strong agreement on. If there is disagreement, then it's not a fact, it's an opinion. You can add opinions to articles, but you generally need to say who is holding that opinion, with in text attributionNo one would seriously challenge that The Stranger is left-wing? In Seattle, the city is dominated by Democrats, except for one elected officeholder, Kshama Sawant, from Socialist Alternative (United States), a party which has often been criticized by The Stranger from the right, even when the paper endorsed Sawant herself. Other groups can be found that are further left than The Stranger, such as Nikkita Oliver's People's Party. It's all relative -- someone in Kansas would probably consider former Washington State Republican party chairman Chris Vance to be so far left he's just this side of Karl Marx.Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has said that when we talk about Neutrality on Wikipedia, we do not mean the exact political center of the 100 mostly old, white men in the US Congress, nor the exact political center of the United States. And we don't just mean today, or this year or this decade. Wikipedia much more global and historical in perspective.The essays You don't need to cite that the sky is blue and You do need to cite that the sky is blue get into this more. The first thing I would say is this: if you're certain no one would dispute that the Stranger is left-wing, then it ought to be the easiest thing in the world to find someone to cite who says it. If you're certain something is a fact, and you're certain it's common knowledge, but you can't find a single respected mainstream source who ever said it, then it's probably not really a fact.As far as the Ben Shapiro article, first, understand Wikipedia is written one piece at a time, one edit at a time. Because I do something that I think makes The Stranger (newspaper) better does not mean I become responsible for the contents of any of the other 5,736,264 articles on en.wikipedia.org. How could the encyclopedia ever be written if the entire thing had to be perfect before you could change one thing? Other stuff exists goes into detail on this. You'll often see WP:OSE cited in these cases. the policy Editing policy also covers it, in Perfection is not required. That said, the Shapiro article does seem to have footnotes in at least two places in which he is called conservative. The articles lead section does not always require footnotes, if the facts summarized there are cited in the body of the article. The lead is supposed to be a summary of facts that are already stated at least once in the body of the article. Often there are footnotes in the lead, in cases where that helps resolve controversy, but it's not mandatory in all cases. See MOS:CITELEAD.If I were you I would add to the article, at least in the body, not the lead, citations for The Stranger supporting marijuana legalization, gay marriage, progressive income taxes, carbon taxes, and endorsements for Kshama Sawant, for example. Those are verifiable facts and readers can deduce where the Stranger is on the political spectrum from that. As far as I can tell, the phrase alt weekly is tantamount to left-progressive anyway. How many conservative urban alt-weeklies are there? Zero, I think. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 18:59, 17 October 2018 (UTC)
 * the alt-weeklies in the JBLM area are somewhat conservative, I think, though this might be hard to cite for Wikipedia. Definitely The Ranger is in this category, and distributed on base. Maybe Weekly Volcano to a lesser extent. But then again, maybe they are just "weeklies" without the "alt". ☆ Bri (talk) 23:00, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Cleanup
Just noting, I cleaned up a bunch of uncited stuff, much of which had been tagged for years. I don't think any of this is controversial, but it was a lot all at once, so I'm just leaving a note. I also removed a banner related to all that (and added a new footnote to the New Editions book). Pete Forsyth (talk) 03:59, 9 August 2023 (UTC)