Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Oxford Blue (newspaper)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was redirect to University of Oxford. &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 17:30, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

The Oxford Blue (newspaper)

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Fails the WP:GNG. Coverage mostly—
 * is not independent of the subject (e.g., coverage of itself), or
 * is not significant (e.g., merely citing the Blue in passing).

It does not readily appear that this can be rectified. A Google News search for ‘The Oxford Blue’ mostly brings up unrelated restaurant reviews; adding ‘“publication”’ brings up one non-trivial mention, concerning the receipt of an award, which hardly seems enough.

The article also fails the subject-specific guidelines.


 * ‘[W]ell-known and significant journalism award or hono[u]r’: as far as I can tell, the Oxford Blue has won one award (‘best new publication’ from the Student Publication Association.) The award must be ‘well-known and significant’. A Google search for ‘"best new publication" "award"’ brings up only one editorial from another Oxford publication mentioning the award, suggesting it’s not terribly well-known or significant.
 * ‘Some sort of historic purpose or…significant history’ (through RSes): few RSes seem to even mention the history of the publication let alone non-trivially.
 * ‘Authoriative or influential in their subject area’ (through RSes): I can’t find anything to this effect.
 * ‘Frequently cited by other reliable sources’: two articles seem to have been widely reported on, viz., the Peter King child pornography case, and the arrest of Dirk Obbink for stealing ancient papyrus fragments (no RS is given—merely an ‘EXCLUSIVE’ article from the Oxford Blue, but the Guardian said this so I’ll insert it later).
 * ‘Significant publication in…non-trivial niche market’: not sure whether student journalism really counts as a non-trivial niche market, but there don’t seem to be RSes to back this up either.

Even if at least one of these were met (frequent citation seems the closest), the general problem that no RSes seem to actually say anything non-trivial or encyclopaedic about the publication remains. The main sourced section is a recitation of previous reporting—perhaps relevant to other articles but not really encyclopedic on a page about the paper itself. There are also some not particularly encyclopaedic minutiae about internal organisation. This leaves very little. Docentation (talk) 15:12, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 15:26, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of News media-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 15:26, 21 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Comment: Notability (media) is an essay and does not seem to have widespread support given how (in my experience) rarely it is used. WP:ORG or WP:GNG is the standard that should apply here. (This is not to say that the subject meets that standard.) 15 (talk) 16:22, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
 * You are quite right. I seem to have misread it as a policy despite it being clearly labelled otherwise. The GNG it is. Docentation (talk) 16:32, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
 * WP:NMEDIA's status isn't particularly clear; there was recently a failed attempt to make it an official guideline, and it failed because there was a bunch of opposition to what it attempted to do for radio stations, but the reception for the newspapers portion was more favorable. IAR, I consider it a reasonable standard. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 19:17, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment: Possible sources: Blog post by the Association for Research into Crimes against Art. inpublishing coverage of the Society of Editors award. I would have thought otherwise, but this might be a borderline keep case, mainly hinging on the quality of the ARCA blog post - being hosted on blogspot doesn't make the source unusable, given that it is its official one. 15 (talk) 16:57, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Redirect to University of Oxford per WP:TOOSOON, and maybe add a sentence on it there. Some student newspapers are notable and others aren't, which leads to many borderline cases like this. If this newspaper survives and grows, it may become notable (it's Oxford, after all, so I'd expect it to garner more media attention than your average community college), but right now, it just doesn't have a significant enough history to warrant an entry in the world's enduring record of notable organizations. Regarding the sources, I'm willing to look beyond the informal blog styling of the ARCA post and say it counts (barely; Association for Research into Crimes against Art has a page but it's pretty shaky itself), but for InPublishing, it begins "As reported by Claire Meadows on the Society of Editors website", and the Society of Editors sponsored the award the paper won, so it's not fully independent. If this was an established publication with a long history, I'd say sure, let's look the other way on the shakiness of the sources and just let it stay, but I can't do that here. Redirecting will allow it to be more easily resurrected if it gets coverage in the future and follows our normal practice for non-notable college publications. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 19:39, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment: that ARCA report is a good find. I agree with Sdkb that it’s somewhat borderline. That said, even if we do count it, it’s only one source. An article with just that for non-trivial coverage in independent reliable sources would not I think really be encyclopedic. There’s already a paragraph on the main University of Oxford page on student newspapers and it would make sense to mention the Blue (regardless of the outcome here actually). Docentation (talk) 13:56, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment - some more possible sources: Geddes Prize award and The Times article on sensitivity reading. Amsmailes (talk) 11:49, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I can't get past the Times paywall. How significant is the coverage there? &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 15:44, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
 * The article covers proposed sensitivity reading from Oxford SU with reference to all three papers in Oxford (Cherwell, The Oxford Student, and The Oxford Blue) and reflects a comment requested from the Blue at the end. &#123;{u&#124; Amsmailes  }&#125;  talk 18:28, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Neither link works for me: could you check them please? Jonathan A Jones (talk) 20:00, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I’ve fixed the links in the comment. There was a pipe when there shouldn’t have been.
 * I don’t think these get over the GNG line to be honest. There’s only one mention (‘Cherwell and The Oxford Blue, a new independent website, said they had not been contacted by the students’ union about the plans.’) I consider this trivial: analogously, if a newspaper report concerning a government plan to censor all newspapers were to contain a brief comment by an otherwise obscure local newspaper at the end, that report would not constitute non-trivial coverage of the local newspaper for GNG purposes. As for the prize, well, SEH awarded it and SEH reported on it. Docentation (talk) 22:47, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Redirect to University of Oxford per WP:TOOSOON, as suggested by User:Sdkb. It caught my eye immediately as of doubtful notability and a probable COI. Deb (talk) 10:58, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Redirect to University of Oxford: I'm familiar with the newspaper (as an Oxonian) and this article is just PR spin. The Oxford Blue wants to portray itself as a competitor to Cherwell and The Oxford Student (and its reputation among students is that its main distinguishing feature is its dissenting social conservativism), but it's just not got the history, credibility or acceptance. The article boasts that it's the "first digital-only student newspaper in Oxford", when this is actually just a reframing of a big reason why it's not as respectable (no print copy distributed to colleges like the others, and hell even the The Oxymoron). The article fails GNG and the essay NMEDIA (which I'll take as at least reflecting rough common practice) and it'd be better TNT'd even if it later becomes notable. The creator violated WP:COIEDIT: you should put new articles through the Articles for Creation (AfC) process instead of creating them directly. Redirecting to University of Oxford is just barely appropriate, I think, due to the brief mention there and as this is commonly done for student newspapers.  To go through the case for notability thoroughly, the BBC doesn't seem to cite The Oxford Blue as the article claims (perhaps it used to appear under the local news links section), but The Guardian does here and here. This Society of Editors award is genuine. The Geddes Prize above is internal to Oxford. The ARCA blog is nonsense. Only the award(s) are in-depth, and not sufficient for NMEDIA#1, while NMEDIA#4 is not passed by just a handful of recent citations and claims of NMEDIA#2,3,5 are thoroughly implausible given the recency of the publication. For GNG, again it's a fail, not enough coverage of the publication's history, founding and practices. Definitely too soon and the creator is clearly an EiC from their username and disclosed COI so not here for the right reasons. — Bilorv ( talk ) 12:16, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
 * its main distinguishing feature is its dissenting social conservativism The fact that we have no source to establish this key fact is as good a reason as any this isn't ready for mainspace yet. Thanks for your insights, &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 15:14, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I don’t really think that the considerations in the first few sentences really come into this. A newspaper could be digital only, mostly known for social conservatism, and everything else you say, and still meet the GNG. Close observers (e.g. of typography) might say that the Mekong Review tries (and fails) to imitate the style of the London Review of Books: but both are still notable. (It also occurs to me that the case against deletion is stronger on WP:NMEDIA than it is on the GNG.) That said I agree with your analysis of sources, and there’s a good case here that even were it notable one would be better off starting again. Docentation (talk) 20:08, 24 August 2021 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.