The capsule summary that begins the entry is:Ĭharles Lincoln Van Doren (born February 12, 1926), a noted American intellectual, writer, and editor who was involved in a television quiz show scandal in the 1950s. There at the top of the entry was this photograph of one of his appearances in the quiz show Twenty One (he's the one on the far right), when his winning streak was ended by opponent Vivienne Nearing (on the left, with host Jack Barry in the middle): I decided to see what Wikipedia had to say about the guy. Preoccupied as I have always been with our culture's lack of interest in (if not downright ignorance of) history, I found myself wondering if anyone in the ad:tech San Francisco audience knew who Van Doren was or how he became involved with Encyclopædia Britannica. Van Doren was with Encyclopædia Britannica at the time, and Wales obviously relished the fact that Britannica never picked up Van Doren's gauntlet in any serious way (thus allowing Wales to claim that he was the first to do so).
My thoughts about the award were triggered by Wales' decision to begin with a 1962 quote from Charles Van Doren on the need for radical rethinking of the concept of an encyclopedia. I grant that my reasoning is somewhat arcane, but part of the fun of these awards is that I can be playful with them from time to time. I see that I have yet to give a Chutzpah of the Week award to either Wikipedia or Jimmy Wales and, while it is still early in the week, I was sufficiently "inspired" by Wales' keynote address to ad:tech San Francisco this morning (entitled "Wikipedia, Wikia and the Future of Consumer Generated Media") that I figured I would strike while the iron was hot.
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