Freebase: Discussion about Newspaper

Long Island Press: Long and storied history

2009-12-18T00:36:02.0006Z

Tom's comments seem right on target to me. The issue is complicated in two ways: one is that, as in the Vanity Fair history linked above, people often talk about magazines of the same name (whether or not the rights to the name were legally transferred from one publisher to another) as if they were the same magazine in any meaningful way. The other is that some people, including many libraries, often treat name changes as creating new entities.

Re WSJ, I agree that mere change in ownership or publisher shouldn't result in a new topic -- periodicals are bought and sold between publishers all the time, and the publishers themselves are always merging and splitting. This is why the publisher property of the periodical type has from and to dates.

Long Island Press: Long and storied history

2009-12-17T23:56:10.0013Z

Yes, the discussion forums associated with the type/schema are the best place to discuss general things about the newspaper type.

Whether or not two things represent the same concept is somewhat of a subjective judgement, but usually it's pretty clear. The name is most definitely not the only or even primary consideration. If someone sells or licenses a name for a completely different magazine, it still represents a different thing. A strike, no matter how long, doesn't make a newspaper a different thing when it returns (unless it went out of business in the mean time).

This history of Vanity Fair http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/vintage/oneclickhistory describes, in my opinion, five different magazines with the name "Vanity Fair" in addition to a sixth published briefly by Condé Nast called "Dress and Vanity Fair." The history writer attempts to emphasize the continuity, but a 50 year gap and a "relaunch" with different owners, different editors, and different writers makes it a new magazine with the same name, not a relaunch of anything (even if they purchased the name).

If the original owner rehired her editor-in-chief and started publishing again after a 5 year hiatus, you might have valid arguments on both sides as to whether it's the same thing or not, but in most cases it's pretty clear cut.

Long Island Press: Long and storied history

2009-12-17T21:42:34.0013Z

Thank-you very much for the Library of Congress resources! That's a treasure trove of resources @ the LOC--I haven't yet looked to see if their Chronicling America @ the LOC is linked on a "Newspaper Researcher Resources Topic."

Getting back to the Long Island Press, is the Schema where the specification of a Newspaper lives? http://www.freebase.com/type/schema/book/newspaper

I don't know much about Schemas--but there must be someplace were a schema is and can be discussed in detail, but I digress.

Assuming a newspaper is owned by a corporate entity then a change of ownership, or a change in control of that ownership, does not (for the purposes of this discussion--for the Newspaper Topic--from my point of view) make for a new Topic.

Continuity is binary, but there are work stoppages, strikes, etc. (I wonder what the longest strike or work stoppage was as they happen all the time) that make this much more than a yes or no decision.

In this case you are correct, the Long Island Press of 2003 is clearly a different Newspaper from the Long Island Press of 1977 except for at least one thing: The Name. I have no idea, however, if the 2003 incarnation is using the same, or similar logotype, or if the 2003 version bought the any rights to the name or otherwise.

The Wall Street Journal was most recently purchased by News Corp and notwithstanding any editorial changed brought about by new owner it should be the same Topic as it was under the previous (Bancroft family) ownership, right?

The Magazine Vanity Fair that is published today is a somewhat different case in that Vanity Fair was a magazine that was edited by Condé Nast (himself) and ceased publication in 1936 and presumably the name was the property of Condé Nast Publications which may have existed in 1936. There was, and is, value in the name and the logotype..and even if the only constant is the name; the name is the same.

It would be a very interesting graph indeed to see all of the various Newspaper Names and the continuity, or lack thereof, of these names; I think this is easy to do with Freebase and look forward to learning how to to this and lots of other fun things here.

Newspaper: Writers; Are writers also employees?

2009-12-17T19:22:25.0013Z

Editor-wise, I'm rethinking how editors should be modeled (there was a question about editors on the data-modelers mailing list just a week ago, too). I've started a new discussion about that here:http://www.freebase.com/discuss/threads/guid/9202a8c04000641f8000000012e1884d.