All the News That's Fit to Post, Part 3: Another Day, Another Shooting and Other Debates About Death
The serene presentation of Wikipedia's front-page "In the news" section belies the messy truth behind the headlines: a never-ending newsroom argument about matters both serious and silly
Today’s post is the third installment of a series on Wikipedia’s “In the news” feature, exploring how the news headlines posted to Wikipedia’s main page are decided upon. I recommend reading “Part 1: What is “In the News” for full context and “Part 2: The Super Bowl and The Boat Race” for a lighter discussion than the one we’re undertaking today.
Mass shootings in the United States
The question of whether “In the news” (ITN) is too U.S.-centric is most often visited upon in sports discussions, as we explored in part two, but it also figures into a much different and much uglier American phenomenon: mass shootings. While other countries have been victimized by their own spree killings and mass murders, sheer numbers foreclose any debate about whether the U.S. is sadly exceptional when it comes to gun violence.
There’s a saying in journalism that “dog bites man” isn’t a story, but “man bites dog” is, meaning novelty is part of what makes something newsworthy. For many ITN contributors, article nominations about U.S. shootings have long passed into “dog bites man” territory. When it comes to the gruesome task of deciding which of these murders are significant enough to post, their level of exhaustion has been boiled down to a single phrase: “another day, another shooting”.
One of the phrase’s earliest recorded uses was in December 2012, in the aftermath of the especially horrific Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. A selection of comments from the hours after it occurred reveals the weariness felt by editors even at this point: “Another day, another shooting. Right to bear arms strikes again.” “Indeed. This is a self-evident argument for repealing the Second Amendment.” “I don’t think this is a good time to argue politics.” “Yes. Never talk about gun control when it’s topical.”
The article was still posted, although it wasn’t always a sure thing. ITN editors tend to be cautious about recent events when limited information is available, especially when the subject matter is this appalling. On the afternoon of December 14, the Sandy Hook blurb was posted to the front page by one editor, then pulled within ten minutes by another. This sparked a fight; the pulling editor was swiftly brought before a dispute resolution board, though no action was taken. The blurb was updated and reposted. All of this inside of two hours, generating 4,800 words of debate.
The 2014 Fort Hood shootings that killed four (including the gunman) and injured sixteen also yielded exhaustion before it yielded a result: “[P]erhaps if the US can go without a mass shooting for a month then ITN should post that”, one editor grumbled. Another lost their temper and provided a classic demonstration of Godwin’s Law: “[I]magine people saying it when Hitler invaded Russia-- ‘Oppose. Napoleon invaded Russia too, so this must not be a big deal.’”
Result: not posted.
A different matter was the Congressional baseball shooting in June 2017, where no one died, but Rep. Steve Scalise was badly wounded. Here there was a case to be made for novelty: “An assassination attempt against such a high-ranking politician with blatant political motivation is a very rare event. I’m baffled at people who say there’s nothing ‘interesting’ about it.”
Result: posted.
A year later, the 2018 Santa Fe High School shooting resulted in 10 deaths and another invocation of “another day, another shooting”. The editor most associated with the phrase—in fact, the same editor who was the strongest supporter of The Boat Race—showed up quickly to offer this terse appraisal: “Oppose business as usual.” Another editor commented: “I find it quite interesting that school shootings in the US attract far more support along the lines of ‘this is dreadful! It must be posted!’ than bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan with far larger casualty totals.”
5,500 words later: not posted.
2023 Nashville school shooting, seven dead, including the shooter? Not posted.
2023 Allen, Texas mall shooting, nine dead, including the shooter? “Oppose routine event. Not even the first mass shooting in Texas this week.” Not posted.
2023 Lewiston shootings, 18 dead in the initial spree? “I rarely support US mass shootings as they are about as common as rain. But this one looks really bad, even by American standards.” Posted.
It’s unfortunate but hardly inexplicable: the higher the casualties, the higher the odds an incident will be posted.
Another journalism saying comes to mind: “If it bleeds, it leads”. This pattern led one longtime ITN participant to create a grim shortcut called WP:MINIMUMDEATHS—mimicking in the style of shortcuts to Wikipedia policy pages—implying there is a guideline requiring a certain number of deaths before a blurb is approved. Calling to mind the old “rickrolling” prank, it brings you to a page announcing: “You were likely referred to this page because someone, either ironically or purposefully, used the WP:MINIMUMDEATHS shortcut as a rationale for a !vote or to make a point. Let’s be clear about one thing here: There is not a guideline for the ‘minimum death toll’ needed for such posting.”
The fake guideline is part of a real, and brilliant, Wikipedia essay called “How ITN works (and how it doesn’t)”, a labor of love by an editor with much invested in the ITN project. This section collects examples of past arguments—mostly the bad ones—attended by pitch black commentary. Take this assessment of accidental explosions: “Knowing death toll may not even be necessary if it’s obviously a major and unusual accident. Nevertheless, 17 is a good lower bound.” Or this rueful comparison of landslide accidents: “7 is enough in Norway. But 113 is not enough in Ethiopia.”
17 is also apparently the “magic number” for U.S. shootings, but it’s not just about the numbers. As the essay jokes-but-not-really: “[C]ircumstances surrounding any event, including a mass shooting in the U.S., must always be taken into account along with its death toll. Thus … 11 people shot in a mass shooting that was live-streamed and accompanied with a 180-page racist screed on an alt-right website will … be posted.”
ITN’s criteria asks readers to make judgments about what is newsworthy. Sometimes those judgments are too difficult to bear without jokes to keep your sanity.
Henry Kissinger vs. Sandra Day O’Connor and Other Recent Deaths
On ITN, there are two possibilities for recently deceased persons to receive a front-page mention: a few may achieve “blurb” status, being listed among the top current stories, while many more merely rate inclusion in the “Recent Deaths” (RD) section just below it, just listing their names. Some, as we’ll see, don’t even get that.
As a brief visit to the very popular page Deaths in 2024 demonstrates, anywhere from one to two dozen notable people die every single day. Plus, one need not even be human to make the list: any “biological organism” is eligible. When not humans it’s usually race horses; most recently, Falbrav, just last week.
If ITN wasn’t careful, it could easily be overrun by its obituary section. Therefore, In the news/Recent deaths (ITNRD) rules try to put limits on which deaths rate a standalone blurb: “The death of major figures may merit a blurb. These cases are rare, and are usually posted on a sui generis basis” following discussion and consensus. The rest are relegated to the “Recent deaths” list, which rotates through a list of 6–7 of the most important from the last seven days.
Who counts as a “major figure”?
When Sandra Day O’Connor passed away in late 2023, Wikipedia editors wrestled with the impact of her legacy. One view: “[S]he was not quite as influential as RBG”. Here again, concern about US-centrism: “Let’s not propose blurbs to American personalities for the simple fact of being American. There are almost 200 supreme courts in the world with their respective first female members”. More caution: “We don’t need two blurbs in a row being American politicians dying of old age.” O’Connor had to settle for the RD list.
And who was that other American politician? None other than Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State reviled by many on the left, who more or less sailed through. From one of his supporters, if you want to call it that: “Like him or hate him, a lot of world history surrounded him.”
Sometimes, being the first woman on the most powerful nation’s supreme court is not quite newsworthy enough. Sometimes being an accused war criminal is better.
Back to the question: who is considered a “major figure” for the purposes of ITNRD? Until a couple of years ago, the passage from the above-quoted rules included a subordinate clause defining said organisms as “transformative world leaders in their field”. But then a few years ago this distinctive clause was unilaterally removed, without discussion, yet editors have continued invoking it as if it remained. (Since there was no discussion, it probably should be restored.)
The vagaries of being “transformational” also came up when the pianist and composer André Previn died in 2019. A blurb was initially approved, then pulled from the main page on the basis of him not being a “major transformative world leader”. A cynical editor weighed in: “LOL - we went from ‘major transformative world leader’ to ‘Very well known in U.K.’ Quick, somebody start WP:LagerfeldEffect”. Another one channeled the same thought process: “LOL -- that was fast. TWO dead Germans in the box in just two weeks.”
Who was this dead German? They were referring to an ITN blurb about the fashion designer and icon Karl Lagerfeld, posted a few days earlier. It didn’t come easily, though: it took 5,600 words of discussion and three attempts for the blurb to finally be approved.
Meanwhile, some articles never make it to the front page RD listing at all, even when a blurb is not sought. This happens when the article nominated is just too embarrassing to post.
The article for British novelist A.S. Byatt was initially posted to RD following her passing in November, only to be pulled for low quality, especially for its over-reliance on quoted material. Soon after, questions were raised about potential copyright violations across multiple sections, adding unsightly warning flags which remain to this day. Although it did not return to the main page, this didn’t foreclose its listing on “Deaths in 2023”.
A similar outcome befell the article about singer Jimmy Buffett, who passed in September 2023. His biographical entry at the time also ran into that conflict between quality and significance: “Oppose solely on quality due to multiple unreferenced sections. RIP to a music legend.” The article was updated significantly, but not enough in time to meet ITN’s current standards. The nomination wasted away, and not even in Margaritaville.
A few years prior, TV personality Alan Thicke never made it to RD because the discussion got bogged down in a long debate about whether his filmography was well-referenced enough. Consensus was never reached. Thicke, one of America’s foremost “TV Dads” of the 1980s, was never in the news again.
All screenshots via Wikipedia, CC-BY-SA 4.0; mass shootings bubble chart by RCraig09, CC-BY-SA 4.0; Karl Lagerfeld photo by Christopher William Adach, CC-BY-SA 2.0; Henry Kissinger photo by U.S. Department of State, public domain
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