Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Connie Bea Hope

Connie Bea Hope

Connie Bea Hope (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

fails WP:BIO, unable to find any reliable primary sources which substantiate claims. Article talk notes possible copyvio issue with the 'Professional career' section apparently being coming from her published obituary. – Zedla (talk) 10:04, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

• Delete per lack of WP:RS. Dalejenkins |[1] 11:18, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose Do not delete. I have added a source

I will also say that if you are going to delete this article you must also delete the article on Dot Moore. It is only fair. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Genovese12345 (talk • contribs) 00:33, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

• Weak Strong Keep The case for notability is not overwhelming. But the subject is worth including. "WKRG in Mobile, which telecasts "Women's World," Connie Bea Hope has guests who cook on the program." From book Television and the wired city: a study of the implications of a change in ...‎ - Page 220 For example. ChildofMidnight (talk) 19:53, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Comment The limited preview from GBooks [2] confirms only that Hope hosted a TV cooking show. From her obituary Hope has apparently only received recognition from a local chapter of an organization of which she was a charter member of, an acclaim hard to view as independent, significant, or possibly even relevant. Nothing credible has emerged explaining the importance or significance of Hope's work, a fundamental test for inclusion, particularly in light of WP:CREATIVE and WP:ENT. Perhaps it's telling that her name hasn't been listed as a former personality at the WKRG-TV article. – Zedla (talk) 22:48, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

I upgraded to strong keep per getting at the numerous sources that well establish this individual's notability. ChildofMidnight (talk) 08:00, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Comment on Comment: The show was on television daily for 26 years and WKRG is the official CBS Station for a market of nearly 1,000,000 people and certainly over 750,000 people during the time that the show was on the air as it has a coverage area spanning more than 10 counties within three seperate states. I would also note that the person who was the original author of the article , when looking at their contributions, almost always is involved in editing articles that have something to do with the media so that they included it says something. It should also be noted that from Payton's obituary that she was the aunt of Hank Aaron. That in and of itself does not confer notability but it is an important thing to consider. It should also be noted that Dot Moore is not included in the list of former on-air personalities for WALA even though her show was on the air for just as long. In both cases, the lists only apply to members of the newscasting teams. The WKRG article also omits all of the area congressmen as having been affiliated with the station even though they were on air weekly as part of the Gulf Coast Congressional Report. All that her lack of inclusion in the WKRG list means is that they need to add a section for former on air personalities who were not part of official newscasts, not that you need to delete this article.

If it were possible to produce digitized newspapers from the 50's and 60's you would probably find a lot more material on this. It is also important to note that this website includes articles on local personalities all of the time. Harry Mabry was a local television personality in Birmingham, he gets an article. In Mobile, John Edd Thompson, A cursory review of media markets the same size shows articles on Vince DeMentri. A cursory review of WNBC's article from New York shows that a majority of current and former staff also have their own articles, even though it is also a local station. A cursory review of New Orleans area stations also shows that several local on air personalities there have their own articles as well —Preceding unsigned comment added by Genovese12345 (talk • contribs) 00:28, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

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Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, –Juliancolton | ^Talk 00:08, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

• Delete - non-notable local TV host in small market; weak sourcing, no real evidence of notability. --Orange Mike | Talk 01:25, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
• Comment Maybe a bold merge/ redirect to mention her in the station article would suffice? ChildofMidnight (talk) 01:52, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
• Delete had a minor non-network show. I have my doubts also about Mabry & about Thompson. Dementri, in contrast, won multiple emmys and other awards, and is therefore clearly notable. DGG (talk) 01:57, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
• Weak keep since I'll buy CoM's obits, which promise that other coverage could be found and probably will be on CoM's fact-finding mission to Mobile and Montgomery. Genovese's verbose contributions don't help the article or the case at AfD, but if they would ever provide the source for the Newsbank thing, that would be an entirely different matter. Genovese, you could be helpful here. Delete--as much as it pains me to vote a. to delete a fellow Alabamian and b. go against the opinion of ChildofM, I do not see the notability here--not in Google Books or Google News. Verifiability, not truth: I cannot verify her notability (for either name). Should sources turn up (when ChildofM comes to visit and plows through the archives here) we can always rewrite the article. I wonder where the information came from in the first place--a very lenghty obit? Drmies (talk) 05:18, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the keep vote below this one. She was a pioneer. She went from being a black woman whose hands were shown but didn't have a speaking role to hosting her own show. She's included in reliable sources about television history, as noted above. She had a 24 year career in television. It's verifiable, it's worth including, and it should be added to and expanded by someone with access to good sources. The bias towards NYT coverage and its archived new stories is unfortunate. ChildofMidnight (talk) 16:10, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Estella Payton was the 'black woman whose hands...' not Hope. There's no credible evidence that either were recognized for noteworthy contributions to racial relations. Hope's great-grandson Chase Anderson Romagnano wrote a opinion piece in 2006 (page 11 of [3]) for the local college paper but there is no other independent reliable coverage to offset the inherent conflict of interest and unreliability. – Zedla (talk) 16:51, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. These details should be noted in the article as they are signifant. There a numerous sources now for this subject. I think a redirect from Estella's name, until we can get sources together for her article as well, would be helpful. ChildofMidnight (talk) 17:10, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Keep If you have newsbank, you can verify the existence of her and her notability. I don't know why people are disqualify this as a "local figure" when this person had a coverage in a three state area with a population of more than a million people. How is the sourcing weak? If it was the New York Times, no one would be saying it was weak. If there was a way to take newspapers from the 1940's, 50's, 60's and 70's this would not even be an issue. If this article was such a problem then why has it not been deleted for the past three years, which is when the original author put it up. If it was not so notable, then why did the original author, who if you look at his contribution page [[4]], made primarily articles on media, find this worthy enough to create an article on. Why are people so eager to delete this article? What harm does it do to have an article that was clearly notable enough to someone who obviously has an interest in media figures that they created it. And if this article is deleted, then why not nominate Dot Moore for deletion as well? Why single out this article? Anyone who can maintain a TV show for 25 years in a 3 state market and who is important enough to pull celebrity guests, which she had, is notable enough to have an article. If this was a non-notable person, celebrities would not have appeared on the program. I will also say that if you delete this article, it will create a precedent whereby every article concerning "local television personalities" will be subject to deletion. I will also say that one of the editors of this article was an editor for "Wikiproject Alabama" and apparently this person thought the subject matter important enough that it was not proposed for deletion

I will also say that the importance of this article is due to the racial implications of it. It was a pioneering show in the days when television was a novelty, the 1950's and it was also an important show because it was a television show in the south where Caucasian was working as a partner with an African-American in complete peace and harmony, which set an important example during the turbulence of the Civil Rights Era. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Genovese12345 (talk • contribs) 12:41, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

OK, please stop bringing Dot Moore (whoever that is) into the discussion. A lot of what you say boils down to WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. What the motivations of previous editors and contributors were, and what was on their bookshelves, and what was on their resumes, is not relevant here, nor do we even know. I've also been involved with Alabama articles on WP, and I'm just a hick. The relevance of all this, if it is as you claim it is, is obvious--but again, where is the proof? And I don't have access to Newsbank, and it's only one particular source. ChildofM's claim of "NYT bias" is specious--the NYT has all their articles available online, going back to the late 1800s. Of course sources that are available are going to be cited. The archive for my local newspaper, in Montgomery, Alabama, sucks a big one--so I don't cite it often, cause it's a hassle. I don't even know what that article in Newsbank is, since there is no bibliographical information given, so I can't even get it any other way--sloppy article writing, I'm afraid.

Show me the sources, or at the very least give a proper reference so other editors can weigh the evidence. A combative attitude, combined with my inability to find anything since the article gives nothing, ensure that there is little I can do to help the article out, as much as I'd like to, esp. given ChildofM's useful and rather convincing (if only verified) argument above. Drmies (talk) 17:59, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

An hour's worth of searching, and nothing more. The Encyclopedia of Alabama doesn't have an entry on her, but that's not saying much. I have access to the Mobile Press-Register, through LexisNexis, but only from 2006 on--two hits, and both trivial. One person, who cooked a chicken at a cook-off in Birmingham, remembers watching her show; one caller to the paper made this remark, reprinted in the "Sounding Of" section: "Connie Bea cooked delicious food--*I don't get downtown much, but I always look over at Kress. You could buy anything. When they opened the lunch counter, that was one of the biggest deals in Mobile: Good cooking by Connie Bea Hope." That's it. (The Montgomery Advertiser had nothing.) I am at the end of my tether here. CoM, have I overcome the NYT bias objection? Drmies (talk) 18:42, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

NYT Bias I will concede that it is impressive that the NYT has a search engine that goes back to the 1800s. However, we have to remember this. The NYT is a paper that reports on many international and national issues and which has a powerful editorial board. However, the NYT, is still a local paper. The majority of its news coverage is news that pertains to the NYC area. I have searched the NYT archives myself and have found legal notices from every age of the city. Now, it is nice to read antique legal notices, but, because most of these legal notices don't pertain to dead people, they are only of a use to someone who is doing a family history that contains one of the persons involved. If an issue is an issue that is local/state/or regional and none of those things involve New York, it is probably not going to find its way into the Times unless it is something extraordinary, in which case, it would be a national newsstory anyway. It is the NYT, but it is still a paper that people get delivered to their doorstep and buy at kiosks and gas stations, just like any other paper.

Now, Newsbank, is a paid-access database that primarily serves to catalog the archives of many daily newspapers and other periodicals across the country. The Mobile Press-Register, which like most papers cannot afford to maintain its own database, outsources the storage of a digital database to them. The archives of the Mobile Press-Register in newsbank go back to late 1992, starting with 1992 election coverage. Every Press-Register article cited on this article can be found at Newsbank. The Mobile Register also links this archive on their own page. Now, you do have to pay to access this article, but I suspect that more than a few articles on this site are based on content that you have to pay to access. Most academic search engines involve pay content which are usually subsidized by the universities which students access them at. Any book on Gbooks that is not public domain will usually have a timeout limit on what you can access or not (at which point I assume payment is involved to read the rest)

http://www.mobileregister.com/archive.htm

When searching this archive I come to find that all 3 of the articles referenced in the source list are available on a pay to play basis from the Register. http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_action=list&p_topdoc=11. If given the time to go to Mobile and do the research at their newspaper archives (which I assume are on microfilm), I could produce probably over 1,000 articles on the subject. I could probably find similar coverage from Pensacola and from Pascagoula, also served by this market, and for which WKRG is the primary CBS station.

Before I continue I would like to say if my tone has seemed a bit brash and less professional, I do apologize. It's just a function of how I argue things sometimes.

However, I would finally like to say that this deserves to be included based on the "exposure" argument. We are talking about a media market which was around 600,000 in 1950, around 1 million when this show went off the air, and around 1.3 million today, if you add up the counties. It was on the air for 25 years. Without hard statistical data this is only a hard guess, but I think it would be reasonable to assume that between 4-6 million people have (up to 2% of the U.S. population), at some point in their lives, been exposed to the subject matter at hand. Counting various generations of people, people who have moved out of the area, and so forth. Now, compare this to say, the Governor of Wyoming. Now, yes, the Governor of Wyoming is the governor of a U.S. State.

However, there are less people in the state of Wyoming than there are in the Mobile CSA, and the Mobile media market currently has at least twice the number of people as Wyoming, so anything that is a Mobile area topic will have at least as much exposure nationally as a Wyoming state topic. In 1950, the population of Wyoming was 290,000 approximately. In 1960, it was approximately 330,000. Now according to [[5]], the population of Mobile County, only one county in the media market, was around 230,000 in 1950 and was around 315,000 in 1960. In addition, 1960 population totals for other counties in the market pull these totals, all approx: Washington 15,000. Clarke 25,000. Baldwin 50,000. Escambia, FL 173,000.

This is only a sprinkling of counties that are covered by the market and were covered during this time period, and even in 1960, the gestation period of this show, this market had a larger population than the entire state of Wyoming and as such, a regional topic within this area would have more exposure among the national population than any topic pertaining to Wyoming. I would feel confident in saying that more citizens of the United States would have a recollection of the subjec matter at hand, if polled, then they would of any governor of Wyoming between the 1955-1981 period. I think that is an important point to make in defense of this subject's notability. Genovese12345 (talk)

• Genovese, please be concise--this is too much too read. I'll come back to it later. Drmies (talk) 21:25, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

About Minor Media Markets I apologize if it is longwinded, but it is really a point that cannot be made by being concise because it is a compound argument/defense. I was adding this section and then it told me edit conflict so I decided to make this into a seperate section. Far from being a "minor media market", Mobile-Pensacola is currently the 61st market in the U.S. out of 210 total markets. Comparatively, New Orleans is # 53 and Biloxi-Gulfport is # 160. WKRG does cover the eastern edge of the Biloxi-Gulfport market and is the default CBS station for the entire Mobile-Pensacola market. WKRG is carried in Biloxi as well. Comparatively, El Paso, Omaha and Honululu are all located in smaller media markets than this one. [[6]] Genovese12345 (talk) 21:40, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Genovese, if you don't give bibliographic information for the articles you found (NewsBank does not write or publish them--it archives them), then I have no way of finding them, I don't care how big or small Mobile is. Since the Press-Register before 2006 is not searchable via LexisNexis or whatever else my university has, there is nothing I can find. You could call that bias, but that's totally beside the point. The "bias" is simply caused by the fact that Mobile (and other Alabama) papers are not easily searchable online, and that's not a bias. CoM, roll that up in some bacon and smoke it. Drmies (talk) 03:49, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Bias. I call 'em like I see 'em. What about the sources in the article? If no one can be bothered to actually read the obituary and see what it says... well... I also found this:

Playground Daily News

Ben's Lake guests were Miss Connie Bea Hope from Mobile who...preparation of poulet a la Bea Hope a tasty concoction chicken... Friday, September 22, 1967 Fort Walton Beach, Florida

Playground Daily News

few left Special guest Mrs Connie Bea Hope from Mobile Ala...Carolyn Chalk of Fort Walton Beach has won third prize...Shop in downtown Fort Walton Beach Coffee To Feature Ceramics...tulips and seed pearls Ring bearer was the bride nephew...

Monday, February 26, 1968 Fort Walton Beach, Florida

It may be called the Northwest Florida News now. Until someone tracks these many citations I think it's best we keep this article. Doc has vacation coming soon I'm sure, and we appreciate his investigating this important subject so that we don't bias our coverage! ChildofMidnight (talk) 07:01, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

• Great news!!! I've gotten us access to the stories indicating the clear and well established notability of this tv personality and cooking pioneer. She worked on a long running show when there were only two channels in Mobile, which may be hard to imagine for the jetsetting googlers of Generation X like DGG and Doc. Here you go: [7]. Complete articles just $2.95 a pop. The snippet views are probably enough to confirm notability, but I'm sure y'all will want to buy the whole article to figure out how the New York Times somehow missed this story and misled you again with their grotesque bias and neglect. Shocking! Hopefully we'll learn this time not to trust their big city lies. ChildofMidnight (talk) 07:19, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
  • The link gives me a notice that says "Your search session has expired." Words to take to heart? ;) I'm still waiting on citations (and CoM, that includes title of article, name of publication, date, page, author, etc...--the stuff I usually take care of for you...) Drmies (talk) 14:52, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

"Cooking show hostess `Connie Bea' Hope dies

Author: KIM LANIER Staff Reporter Date: January 27, 1993 Publication: Mobile Register (AL) Page: 1B Beatrice Walker ``Connie Bea Hope, former hostess of a local television cooking show, died Monday in a local hospital. She was 88. Mrs. Hope, a native of Mobile, was host of WKRG-TV's ``Connie's Cupboard for many years. Mrs. Hope long has been a fixture in the Mobile area culinary scene. She began working at the candy counter at Kress & Co. as a teen-ager. After leaving Mobile during World War II,... Click here for complete article ($2.95)

• She's also included in this obituary of her co-host:

Television cook Estella Payton dies at age 95 Author: KIM LANIER Staff Reporter Date: December 16, 1999 Publication: Mobile Register (AL) Page: 01 Television cook Estella Payton dies at age 95 Longtime member of 'Woman's World' cast recalled for her generosity By KIM LANIER Staff Reporter Estella Payton, who for several decades entered the homes of many Mobilians through the cooking segments of WKRG-TV's long-running show, "Woman's World," died Sunday at a local hospital at the age of 95. Mrs. Payton, a longtime resident of Mobile, began her career... Click here for complete article ($2.95)

And they're referred to as the Julia Child and Martha Stewart of Alabama on the mobile.org webiste (per the link I provided you on your talk page). ChildofMidnight (talk) 15:12, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Nothing new, if we're talking about the 4 hits from the Mobile Register's digital archive (going back to 1993), direct search link is [8]. Genovese has already kindly cited these in the article. Hope's obituary is already a part of the article text, which is a basic indicator of noteworthiness -- there's evidence Hope was successful over the years as a Mobile TV personality, but still no independent recognition of noteworthy contributions which would speak to WP:BIO. Mobile.org is hardly a WP:RS. Success isn't the threshold for inclusion. – Zedla (talk) 17:32, 25 May 2009 (UTC)