Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brittany Spanos

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 delete‎. It's been suggested that there may be more coverage coming soon, but for now it's a delete. WP:REFUND is the place to go to get the article restored to draft when you're ready. Stifle (talk) 09:21, 14 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Brittany Spanos

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As I wrote in my PROD which was removed:

I can find plenty of Rolling Stone bylines from Spanos, and she is a writer I'm familiar with (I even follow her on Twitter), but I don't see any reliable coverage that indicates major notability. Of the sources here, two are bios from her employers, and the third is WP:FORBESCON, and I couldn't find anything else.

Since that removal, one more source has been added, but it's a mostly primary-source interview. Personally, I still don't see notability, and I don't think having her byline appear frequently on Wikipedia would be enough to get her there. QuietHere (talk | contributions) 16:28, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Academics and educators, Journalism, Music, and New York. QuietHere (talk | contributions) 16:28, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Frequently quoted as a SME in pop music, but has only ever been the subject of coverage for her Taylor Swift course at the Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music, and only in WP:NEWSPRIMARY sources. A redirect/merge would requrie a mention at the target, which would be undue. Mach61 (talk) 18:04, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: She's got a by line at Rolling Stone, prior to which it appears that she was quite active in other known publications. The coverage of her Taylor Swift course at NYU is worldwide and in major newspapers. I haven't invested too much time digging here, but she seems like someone we would want to keep in this encyclopaedia. Cheers, Cl3phact0 (talk) 19:33, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Illinois-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 20:18, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: Agree with the PROD, very much a music journalist, but hardly anything about the individual. This NPR interview is about all I could find [1], she talks about Taylor Swift... Nothing for coverage of Spanos herself found. Oaktree b (talk) 20:40, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: This discusses an article Spanos wrote [2], she's briefly discussed here [3]. Still not sure we have enough for notability yet. Oaktree b (talk) 20:44, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: agree she is borderline on general notability criteria, but that actually seems to me a sign that these criteria don't work very well for journalists. I gave her a stub after noticing that her music journalism is cited on over 1,200 wikipedia pages, which is highly unusual. Dsp13 (talk) 09:18, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's remarkable. Page after page of "Brittany Spanos opined", "according to Brittany Spanos", "Brittany Spanos of Rolling Stone writes", "Brittany Spanos, writing for The Village Voice", etc., and that's only the references to her opinions, criticism, and writing – add to that her articles being used as WP:RS references in page after page of our music related articles and you get someone of a certain gravitas. Not an inconsequential figure in her field: would WP:ANYBIO (point 2) apply? -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 17:34, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think these are a "new concept, theory or technique". Oaktree b (talk) 18:02, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I meant this: "The person has made a widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record in a specific field" (in the context of my comment above). Cheers, Cl3phact0 (talk) 18:06, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Citation on 1200 different wikipedia pages does feel like a contribution to the enduring historical record in the field of music/music journalism. Amanda bee (talk) 01:30, 13 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If we're stretching this hard just to reach "borderline", then I still lean toward non-notable. QuietHere (talk | contributions) 19:49, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'll give it "prolific journalist", but I don't see notability for a stand-alone article. I wouldn't be upset if she was mentioned in a few lines in the article about the magazine (Rolling Stone), but I don't see enough coverage to warrant an article. I agree she should have an article based on the volume of her work alone, but there are no sources we can use. Oaktree b (talk) 20:52, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We have over 1,000 Pages that link to "Brittany Spanos". Her work is cited more often than Ellen Willis's (here on enwiki). If we accept that Wikipedia is "part of the enduring historical record", then her notability doesn't feel like a stretch to me. -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 21:15, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comment whether other pages link to this woman or even use her pieces is irrelevant to notability. Interviews or things she wrote herself wouldn't count towards that either when not independent of the subject. To warrant an article, what we would need is third-party pieces (with more than just a cumulative paragraph) discussing Spanos. SNUGGUMS (talk / edits) 00:33, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not convinced. It seems like we may be depriving readers of useful information by being overly proscriptive. Perhaps, if it isn't clear, the definition of WP:ANYBIO needs a tweak? -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 09:23, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I've added a few details and additional references to the article (including a WSJ piece). I think we may now be over the GNG line without further ado. -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 12:19, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Those are stories about the course, which only briefly mention Spanos, I still don't think it's enough for notability. Oaktree b (talk) 13:27, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I had no idea who Spanos was before spotting this AfD, and I have no particular interest in the subject (and probably wouldn't be able to identify a Taylor Swift song if it fell on my head), however, having now spent a fair amount time absorbing information about both, I respectfully disagree. In my view, there's plenty of coverage about Spanos herself – just need to look for it. I'm now more convinced we should keep this article. That said, I'll park it here for now and leave this to more experienced folks than myself. Cheers, Cl3phact0 (talk) 13:39, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

PS: Per WP:APPNOTE, I've mentioned this article on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women in Red and am making that known here as a matter of "good practice". -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 14:06, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Delete The Vulture source is an interview and doesn't count for notability. Regardless of the Swifty class, BIO1E applies. Journalists write about others and most journalists are never the subject of coverage even if the journalist is prolific. Oaktree has already made this case. Chris Troutman (talk) 15:58, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: She's presenting at an academic conference in a few weeks [4], hopefully which will publish something we could use under AUTHOR or ACADEMIC notability. Oaktree b (talk) 16:52, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Delete for the moment per Oaktree, but maybe later. Nikkimaria (talk) 05:10, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(not sure how much weight you should give me, as I created the stub, but) Keep. I don't keep up with American pop culture, but she seems serious. Her Rolling Stone journalism is fairly well cited on Google Books (certainly compared to the average author), though citations are dispersed across many shorter pieces. I added a short paragraph on interviews and longer pieces repeatedly cited by books. Dsp13 (talk) 09:49, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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.