Since those issues of Newsbeat magazine that featured political news on their front cover were the poorest-selling issues over the past three years, the publisher of Newsbeat has recommended that the magazine curtail its emphasis on politics to focus more exclusively on economics and personal finance. She points to a recent survey of readers of general interest magazines that indicates greater reader interest in economic issues than in political ones. Newsbeat's editor, however, opposes the proposed shift in editorial policy, pointing out that very few magazines offer extensive political coverage anymore.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The publisher of Newsbeat magazine is of the opinion that the magazine should refrain from emphasis on politics since those issues which contained political news on their front cover witnessed some of the poorest sales. In support, she also mentions a survey of readers of a general interest magazine which indicates greater reader interest in economic issues compared to political ones. The editor of the magazine is of the opposite opinion and does not welcome the shift in the editorial policy as she believes that very few magazines offer the extensive political coverage as done by Newsbeat. To evaluate whether the recommended shift in editorial policy is reasonable or not, certain questions must be answered and certain assumptions must be questioned. I would like to present three questions which would help in determining the strength of the stand taken by the publisher of Newsbeat magazine.
To begin with, the publisher extrapolates the data collected over a period of past three years to recommend that if the magazine keeps focusing on political issues, it would drop in popularity. But that may not be the actual case. It may be that, with the atmosphere becoming more and more politically charged, readers now wish to read magazines which emphasise on politics. So the pertinent question which must be answered here is whether there has been any shift in the political climate which could warrant a discussion and consequently, a high demand for political magazines. To answer this, the publisher should ideally try to gather some market data and data about the sentiments of all the readers to determine whether this assumption is strong enough or not.
Secondly, the publisher takes the help of a survey of readers of a general magazine to claim that the public does not wish to read political news. But the catch here is that the survey is based only on the readers of the general magazine! Isn’t it obvious that general magazine readers would not be very inclined to reading political journalism? So the dataset which is used to make this assumption is skewed against publishing political news. Therefore the data cannot be relied on. The publisher needs to ask whether the sentiments expressed in the general survey any representative of the preferences of the readers of Newsbeat? If the answer is no, the publisher would then have to reanalyze the situation.
Coming to the last point, I would like to reiterate the idea averred by the editor, “very few magazines offer extensive political coverage anymore”. Now if this is indeed true, wouldn’t shifting focus from political to economic news be a counterintuitive strategy for Newsbeat? Instead of focusing on their speciality, they are getting rid of it to focus on other areas where they may not be the best. Newsbeat should try to focus on their own strengths instead of changing their core values. It is not a wise strategy to compromise on excellent journalism just to generate more sales. We need more data to understand the ground truth. Is Newsbeat as good at economic journalism as political? Are all political magazines suffering from a dive in the sales? All this background knowledge would help us build up a sound solution.
To sum up, the argument is flawed as it relies on various unwarranted assumptions. However, it could be supported by providing relevant data which can provide a clear answer to the questions discussed above. If the publisher is able to account for each of the assumptions made by her (preferably in the form of a systematic report), the argument would be considerably strengthened. Only then would it be possible to evaluate whether the decision of cutting out political news from Newsbeat is a wise decision or not.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
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| 2021-09-27 | Akruthi S | 53 | view |
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 5 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 7 2
No. of Sentences: 30 15
No. of Words: 623 350
No. of Characters: 3052 1500
No. of Different Words: 267 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.996 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.899 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.745 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 223 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 186 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 141 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 87 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.767 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.221 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.533 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.271 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.447 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.1 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 445, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Therefore,
...ewed against publishing political news. Therefore the data cannot be relied on. The publi...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 187, Rule ID: DID_BASEFORM[4]
Message: The verb 'wouldn't' requires base form of this verb: 'shift'
Suggestion: shift
...”. Now if this is indeed true, wouldn’t shifting focus from political to economic news b...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, consequently, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, to begin with, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 31.0 19.6327345309 158% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 23.0 12.9520958084 178% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 17.0 13.6137724551 125% => OK
Pronoun: 35.0 28.8173652695 121% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 96.0 55.5748502994 173% => OK
Nominalization: 7.0 16.3942115768 43% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3129.0 2260.96107784 138% => OK
No of words: 621.0 441.139720559 141% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.038647343 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.991980728 4.56307096286 109% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.80841329435 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 276.0 204.123752495 135% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.444444444444 0.468620217663 95% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 1001.7 705.55239521 142% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 9.0 4.96107784431 181% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 29.0 19.7664670659 147% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 53.5730911921 57.8364921388 93% => OK
Chars per sentence: 107.896551724 119.503703932 90% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.4137931034 23.324526521 92% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.65517241379 5.70786347227 64% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 16.0 8.20758483034 195% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.353594545603 0.218282227539 162% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0945072190532 0.0743258471296 127% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0992357774954 0.0701772020484 141% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.202638688569 0.128457276422 158% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0953306229729 0.0628817314937 152% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.0 14.3799401198 90% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 50.16 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.95 12.5979740519 95% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.93 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 128.0 98.500998004 130% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Write the essay in 30 minutes.
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.