User:Noahwaxman/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
The Salem News

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I chose this article because I started analyzing it in class the other day and it is connected to our course. The Salem News is my hometowns newspaper and is very important to my community. At the same time it is not always considered the most reliable. At first glance the wikipedia article seems brief but accurate.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

The lead is strong, but a little lacking in information. As an overview of the Salem News, the lead is very effective however it doesn't outline the content of the rest of the wikipedia article very well. This is probably because the content itself is very brief. There is a section on history that is very informative and well written, and a one sentence section on price. These are both necessary and effective sections, however there are other topics that could be included such as content the news paper usually covers, any bias it may or may not have and how that relates to the local community, a discussion of the journalists who write for it, etc.

Although there is missing information, what is present is neutral in tone. The sources however could use some work. The most recent one is from 2012 and many of the hyperlinks now lead to dead ends. Additionally, most of the information about this news paper seems to have come from other local newspapers.

The writing is well organized and concise but there are no images or other media to support the article.

The talk page does not provide any insight into the history of the article. There is some recent discussion on a similarly named wikipedia article that this could get confused with, but there is nothing from when the article was being written and the edits that people chose to make.

Overall this article has a good base with a relatively developed history section and passable lead. The information should be fact checked with current, reliable sources and updated if needed. There should also be more research done on other relevant topics to add more sections to create a well rounded understanding of the Salem News.