Template talk:Infobox newspaper

Scope

I would suggest that this is ok for newspapers with a general topic coverage, but not for trade newspapers. For trade newspapers, I've started using {{Infobox Journal}}, but I'm not wholly comfortable with this.

Thoughts?

Courtland 16:58, July 17, 2005 (UTC)

Publisher

No infobox about newspapers should lack an element for Publisher, this being the person who has executive responsibility for the operation and editorial policy of a newspaper. The editor would, of course, be subordinate to the publisher. I'm hesitant to change lightly a template that's so heavily linked-to, especially since I am a template novice. Hence, I will throw this suggestion to the four winds, hoping someone else will choose to run with it:

Add Publisher to the template.
Change Editor-in-chief to simply Editor since that term may be more generally accurate.
Website should be Web site. (Yes, this is pedantic.)

— JonRoma 04:31, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with 1 and 2. Wholeheartedly disagree with 3. jareha 23:03, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding 3, there does not seem to be a consistent style on Wikipedia, nor have I found a policy/recommendation favoring either website or web site. The article Website uses the website form, yet cites several fairly weighty authorities — Oxford English Dictionary and Associated Press Stylebook — that prefer web site.

Though I prefer the latter form, ideally one form or the other would be chosen, and used consistently throughout Wikipedia. One possible way of sidestepping the debate would be to simply use site which, accompanied by a URL and the link symbol, could be enough context to be considered self-explanatory. Thoughts? — JonRoma 04:32, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

To be fair, I'm biased for the rapid evolution of language. This opinion is almost entirely my own (i.e. I found a great argument a while back and lost the source). That said, "site" may not offer enough clarity. jareha 07:35, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

{{{political}}} is now optional.

The {{{political}}} parameter is now optional. The article on The New York Times was running into trouble with this. Note that the {{if defined}} template refers to a subtemplate, Template:Infobox Newspaper/Political position. Omphaloscope » talk 15:33, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:if defined is becoming a deprecated meta-template. I've replaced it with a CSS method which acts the same. -- Netoholic @ 21:38, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldnt it be better just to remove this option? Intangible 23:17, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think the option is still useful for newspapers in the UK and other places where newspapers formally align themselves with political parties - at least this is what I've gleaned from the NYT discussion. However, I'd suggest removing it from the Chicago Tribune example on the template page, since in the US folks will rarely agree and sometimes get into edit wars over this. In fact, reverts and disagreement over Chicago Tribune can be seen here. -Tobogganoggin ^talk 03:27, 21 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Vertical alignment?

Netoholic, I support your replacement of the deprecated HTML alignment tags with their CSS equivalents, but am curious why you removed the vertical-align: top styling (most of which pre-dated my recent rework of the template). From an readability point of view, I am of the view that cells making up a row ought to be explicitly styled so that the top (or only) line of any textual content always lines up across these cells. Your removal of this means that such alignment is only guaranteed when the textual content is short enough to not linewrap. — JonRoma 08:09, 31 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Vertical alignment is already specified in the infobox class in MediaWiki:Common.css. As such, specifying it in the template is redundant. -- Netoholic @ 08:44, 31 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Netoholic:

Ah, but it isn't truly redundant, because the style definition in MediaWiki:Common.css doesn't seem to strictly adhere to the CSS2 specification. The germane part of the style sheet is as follows:

.infobox tr {
   vertical-align: top;
}

The CSS specification, in Section 10.8. Line height calculations: the 'line-height' and 'vertical-align' properties states that the vertical-align style element applies to inline-level and table-cell elements (emphasis added). Further, the vertical-align examples in the specification at Section 17. Tables are all applied to the table cell elements <td> and <th> rather than to the row-level element <tr> as is done in MediaWiki:Common.css. The fact that some browsers allow applying the vertical-align style element to the <tr> tag does not mean that browsers are required to support this variation from the standard, and some browsers in fact do not do so.

It appears that a standards-compliant style sheet would include the following styling in place of what's there today:

.infobox td,
.infobox th {
   vertical-align: top;
}

This change would seem to produce the desired consistent alignment behavior in a browser-independent way. Do you concur with this suggestion? — JonRoma 09:08, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm fine with that. In fact, I have some other changes to the td and th styling which also need to go in. I just need an admin to make all the changes. -- Netoholic @ 09:12, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, that was fast! I was going to look into proposing the style change when it's daylight here, but if you want to carry the ball instead, that's fine with me. So that I can follow, please leave word on my talk page. Thanks and Happy New Year. — JonRoma 09:43, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Price

Should there be a line for the cost of the newspaper?

i.e. USD 0.75 (EUR 0.62) for USA Today, and GBP 0.70 (USD 1.24, EUR 1.02) Monday-Friday & GBP 1.40 (USD 2.47, EUR 2.04) Saturday for The Guardian? 159753 12:51, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

While this information could be useful if it were kept up to date, my suspicion is that it will prove to be more of an annoyance than a help. Some newspapers have different costs for different locations (city vs. suburbs), and this quickly turns into a rat's nest. At any rate, any newspaper of any significance ought to have this information on their web site and should therefore be readily available through the web link that's already part of this template. — JonRoma 03:20, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Er, the the UK and in much of Europe, prices for newspapers don't change on where they are. Many newspapers don't have this at all so it would be useful.159753 13:38, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Language parameter?

Might I suggest adding a parameter for the language(s) of the newspaper? That is a rather basic fact about it, though I'm not sure whether it is too obvious when the location of the headquarters is given. — Peter L <talk|contribs> 21:46, 14 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, I added the field. -- User:Docu

Periodical ID

I also suggest adding a field for the ISSN ID. Academic publication infoboxes such as scientific journals already include this. Evolauxia 19:46, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

An optional field for ISSN is now available. -- User:Docu

I have added a "oclc" parameter as well as a consequence of User:Keesiewonder finding one which did not have an ISSN listed for the OCLC. see Talk:The Carillon. John Vandenberg 22:18, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Newspaper circulation

Numbers on circulation would be interesting. Seabhcán 14:14, 14 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The field had been added, but not updated in the Chicago Tribune sample and many other uses of the template. Thus I made it optional. -- User:Docu

"political" line

Although I like having it included, this line seems to be more trouble than it is worth, providing openings for POV accusations, edit wars and POV seeping into a factual infobox. (See New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

In various arguments over the line, some have defined it to be for the entire Newspaper, others for the Editorial Page and others in terms of who writes columns for the paper.

It also opens things up to subjectivity with respect to what a "Liberal" position is or what a "Conservative" position is. Especially tricky with extreme partisans who assume they are in the center of the political spectrum (which in and of itself is difficult to define - eg a hard core leftist probably thinks anything to the right of Mother jones or Daily Kos is conservative and vice versa with an extreme rightist who thinks the NY Post is a Liberal rag).

for that reason and for inconsistent use of the line across multiple entires, I suggest it be deleted fromt he template.

One thing you have forgot, is a big difference between America and Europe is that European papers are usually well known for being politically biased. People know that the Times of London is centre-right (conservative), Le Monde is centre-left/centre and the Daily Mail is right. In Europe some political parties do have there own newspaper such as L'Unità with Democrats of the Left, or linked to a newspaper like the Daily Telegraph with the British Conservative Party.

I don't think "political position" is an appropriate item for an infobox. Infobox parameters should have objective criteria. There is no room in an infobox for an NPOV treatment of each side of the issue. The best place to discuss a newspaper's political leaning is in the text of the article, where we can cite critics and provide some real background. It doesn't look like the inclusion of {{political}} was ever discussed in detail here. I'd support its removal. Rhobite 20:02, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed with Rhobite, which is why I raised the issue here. It adds too much subjectivity to the Infobox and is open to interpretation by partisans of all stripes. A quick perusal of the LA Times, NY Post, NY Daily News, WaPo, WSJ and NY Times pages shows a real inconsistency in how the label is used and at least two major disagreements/edit wars. This should be removed and moved to the text of the article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 213.86.213.196 (talk • contribs) .

Yes, I support its removal too. —Gennaro Prota ^•Talk 22:46, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree wholeheartedly. Intangible 02:16, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How about making it optional piece? It is relevant to say, British papers and inrelevant to say, American papers.159753 11:19, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

good point. I didn't consider the fact that European papers tend to formally align themselves with particular parties/ideologies when I raised the point.

It appears the line is already optional, so instead of deleting here, I decided to Be Bold and delete individually for major US papers of and see what the response would be.(the variability and inconsistency in usage of the line in some of these infoboxes was astounding, some pretty major POV in some as well).213.86.213.196 14:44, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

When I created this template I had Swedish newspapers in mind, so therefor teh "political"-field was intended to be used only for the official label of the newspaper's editorial page. As said above, it would be impossible and completely POV to try to value the content of the rest of the newspaper, especially the news section. I don't know much about the case in other countries, but at least in Sweden all newspapers have an official label of their editorial pages. What's the state in other countries, does for example Le Monde and New York Times have any official labels of their respective editorial pages? Perhaps it wasn't so wise to name the line to just "political", maybe it should be renamed to "editorial" or something? /Slarre 23:39, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

political -> political allegiance

Maybe it should be renamed to political allegiance, to denote the relationship to a political party? Otherwise it seems to be a parameter that can only result in POV. If a newspaper has a 'conservative' journalist, it can be said so in the article, this does not make the newspaper as a whole 'conservative'. Intangible 14:44, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've changed it, being WP:BOLD. Intangible 15:59, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Website

This infobox shouldn't require a website parameter if the newspaper has ceased publication, since it could have ceased publication long before the Internet was invented. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 09:41, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree... I changed the template to reflect that. — Linnwood 20:30, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

hCard Microformat

I would like us to add the hCard microformat (see also Wikipedia:WikiProject_Microformats) to this template. I can advise on the required mark-up, but I'm not familiar with template code editing. Andy Mabbett 12:29, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've managed to do that, after all; though we still need to add "class="url" to the href for the website; but that's in another template. Andy Mabbett 12:51, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It breaks, where "name" (a required field for hCard) is an image, rather than text :-( Any suggestions, before I revert it? Andy Mabbett 12:55, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Alt text

Further to the above, in, for example:

{{Infobox Newspaper
| name                = [[Image:The New York Times.svg|225px|center]]

how can we add alt text for the image? Andy Mabbett 12:39, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Found it:

{{Infobox Newspaper
| name                = [[Image:The New York Times.svg|225px|center|This is alt text]]

Andy Mabbett 18:13, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Circulation dates

The circulation statistic in the infobox is a good addition, but it needs to have an additional parameter to specify a date, such as "circulation year = 2007" to produce "2007 circulation" or something to that effect, and just "Circulation" if the year parameter is missing, with a strong recommendation in the documentation to include a specific frame of reference when using the circulation statistic. When looking at the circulation statistic for a magazine that has been in print for 40 years, I find it pretty vague as to when those circulation figures are from. While I'm rambling on the topic, perhaps a "peak circulation = " field and a "peak circulation year = " field would also be useful optional parameters to show a comparison of modern circulation vs. circulation in the publication's heyday? Just a thought. Cruzin07 (talk) 18:07, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sister newspapers

I didn't find parameter Sister newspapers here, though I think it could be useful to have such. I made the same template at Bulgarian Wikipedia (you may see it bg:Шаблон:Вестник) and added Sister newspapers there \сродни вестници\, I don't what to work here, coz we have too much to do in bgwiki, so I'm just giving the idea. Regards, --Aleksd (talk) 11:05, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done I did what you, Aleksd, said and updated the doc too.