Talk:Dan Rather resigns as anchor, to stay on as correspondent

Who is Dan Rather ??
 * Wikified article with links to the Wikipedia article, and at the end, a kind of paragraph long biography. I don't really like the biography but that's for others to fix. Also I removed all of the blog links which simply stated peoples' opinion on the matter. Needs work. Cap'n Refsmmat 23:17, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Dan Rather should be identified by network name as well – he is not a household name outside the Western region. It is quite ambiguous and lacking international context; for instance, Bush is always mentioned as US President Bush, and Tom Ridge always identified with the prefix US Secretary of Homeland Security.

Please do not remove links to blogs again without an explanation. Many of the other wikinews articles link to blogs, so I am unsure why someoe removed these from this article. Opinion blogs are an open means of providing access to news analysis-- this is not the wikipedia, so OP/ED pieces are legitimate links and a crucial part of most news organizations. I have labelled them as blogs to distinguish from OP/ED pieces written by others, which I plan to list separately. For the most part, blog entries are written in response to specific news articles, so listing them under the articles to which they refer seems a natural form of organization. I have changed the listing to use commas so that they are less intrusive.

Also, please do not categorize the list of related links as "sources" unless all of them were actually consulted in the writing of the text of the article, I added this list for the benefit of readers, but as far as I know the article writers have not used material from all of these in composing the main text of the article. As material in the text is derived from particular articles, then maybe the specific articles consulted can be moved into a list of sources... otherwise, it would be misleading to assert our list of related links were consulted as sources for the article.


 * A proposal was made on one of the policy pages to use "references" as supposed to "sources". Might be somewhat better than see also and related links, but a policy hasn't really been set you. Lyellin 00:51, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Am changing to "references". Also moving "See also" to end of references.

Rather is the third most watched anchor on United States television.
 * True, but he is the third of three, thus the very least watched network anchor on US broadcast TV, so our statement above smacks of PR spin, like saying, "the glass is almost full," when it is two-thirds empty and leaking. Perhaps the story would be stronger if we just omit any comment on his unremarkable ratings, because whatever comment we make that tends negative or positive in connotation is going to read as POV unless we simply list the raw shares and ratings, which would look really bad for reasons that are not entirely Rather's fault (more competition, etc.). If I recall, Cronkite averaged 30-ish share while Rather averaged less than 6 (units being percent of TV-watching US households tuning in to the show).
 * Of course, now that this "news" is about two weeks old, a better question might be whether we should even bother refining such stories. Thoughts?

Why Run This Story?
Not only is the story old, it is very weak. How long has Rather been at CBS News? How long has he been a journalist? What did he do before becoming an anchor? When exactly did he start as anchor of the CBS Evening News? He's one of three network anchors, not three broadcast anchors. Of the three network anchors, is he the one who has served the longest? What did his tenure as anchor cover? Was he ever number one? Is he third of the old networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) now? Who is one? How long has Rather been third? Finally isn't Kurtz the media correspondent for the Washington Post? It's somewhat inaccurate to call him a mere reporter for the Post and the citation contained in the article is closer to being Kutz's opinion than a fact. However I agree with his use of the word "botched" to describe the 60 Minutes story on Bush's National Guard service as opposed to "false." The problem with the story was that the documents used to support the story were not the originals CBS alleged them to be.


 * The problem was not that the documents were duplicates ("not the originals"), the problem was that they were outright fabrications-- the originals never existed, at least according to interviews with everyone still alive who would have had any memory of generating such documents. Some of the attitudes and opinions expressed in the documents were corroborated, but the documents themselves and the majority of their contents have been fully discredited. Also, a full biography of Rather is something we can leave to Wikipedia and link. The thrust of this story is that he announced retirement from the anchor desk, so if we have given enough data to identify him, the job he's leaving, and the circumstances surrounding his departure, we have probably succeeded-- anything extra can be found though Wikipedia links or the list of references pointing to articles answering most of the questions you have raised.

To answer the question, "Why Run This Story?" The answer is that it was newsworthy at the time it was generated, Nov. 23-24, 2004. Every major news organization ran the story (examples in reference section), so the question might be better phrased, "Why Should We Not Run This Story When Everyone Else Is Running It?"

Category
edit protected Please add this article to Category:CBS News, and localize the link of the same name. Thank you. Green Giant (talk) 10:43, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Added some cats, w-ized. --Pi zero (talk) 03:08, 8 October 2015 (UTC)