Syracuse Post-Standard

History

It should be noted that during this time, the Syracuse Herald-Journal also co-existed. The Herald-Journal was the result of the merger of the Syracuse Journal and the Evening Herald in 1939. Soon afterward, William Randolph Hearst's paper, the Sunday American, became known as the Herald American. The Herald-Journal, Herald American, and The Post-Standard all were purchased in 1944 by Samuel I. Newhouse, later benefactor of Syracuse University's acclaimed S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

For the most part, the papers operated independently from each other, outside of ownership. The Post-Standard was published in the morning, the Herald-Journal in the afternoon, and the Herald American on Sundays (which technically served as both the Post and the Herald). In 1993, the local feature desks were merged into one section, CNY, in reference to Central New York. In 2001, the Herald-Journal folded, leaving one paper, The Post-Standard.

Today, the papers are still owned by the Newhouse family, whose company is named Advance Publications. Along with the Syracuse paper, Advance also publishes Parade Magazine, the New Orleans Times Picayune, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Wikipedia controversy

On August 25, 2004, he published an article reviewing Wikipedia, referring to it as "untrustworthy, and should be avoided" and separately as "outrageous", "repugnant" and "dangerous".[1] This proved to be a hot button article for supporters and critics of the project, with a search of Google resulting in at least 315 blogs and other sites mentioning the commentary.

One of these was techdirt.com, which challenged Al Fasoldt to vandalize the article about the city in which his newspaper is located, Syracuse.[1] There is no evidence of Fasoldt taking up the challenge, but several other readers decided to put Wikipedia to the test.

On September 15, another journalist for the paper, Brian Cubbison followed-up on the controversy[1], stating that one tester, Alex Halavais had reported that vandalism to Wikipedia articles is usually fixed within hours, a statement that he backed up with data from his testing, which he dubbed "The Isuzu Experiment."[1] Halavais had added a false fact in the history section of the Syracuse article, but this was removed by a Wikipedian about an hour and a half later. A more obvious false fact was placed elsewhere in the article, and this was removed within 45 minutes. Post-Standard reporter Cubbison ended his article by stating there were still three mistakes in the Syracuse article, one that had been there since June, but did not mention what these were.

The librarian originally quoted by Fasoldt gave the following follow-up statement:

I just re-read what I originally sent to Al Fasoldt in the recent Post-Standard column. I'm afraid I do have egg all over my face... The message was NOT... that Wikipedia is not an authoritative source. The message was that the best thing about the web (the sharing of information and ideas) can also make it harder for the average high school student to make a judgement call when checking the authority of a source used for research.
:I'm sorry if this generated controversy over the authority of the site, this is NOT what was intended. It just illustrates the problem. (MediaWiki Quarto, Issue 1)

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