The editor of a local newspaper sent the following memo to the managing editor of the paper:“Three years ago when we surveyed our subscribers, they complained about the quality of the reporting and writing in the paper. Since that time, we have made a con

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The editor of a local newspaper sent the following memo to the managing editor of the paper:

“Three years ago when we surveyed our subscribers, they complained about the quality of the
reporting and writing in the paper. Since that time, we have made a concerted effort to hire older, more experienced journalists. According to our most recent survey, these changes have made a vast improvement. Not only has our subscriber base grown by 13%, but they also rated us higher on both reporting and writing. Therefore, it is evident that to continue to increase our readership, we should hire the most experienced journalists we can find, and gradually fire our younger, less experienced reporters."

Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers
to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.

While the older, more experienced journalists may help improve the quality of the paper , the reasons the editor puts through in asserting they are the cause for the are hardly cogent and are rife with holes and assumptions. The editor's attribution of the recent success of the paper to his senior journalists is incorrect unless more information is provided.

Firstly the editor uses only the two surveys to judge the quality of the writing and reporting in the paper , this is a mistake in itself. The surveys may not be exactly the same ; for example the first survey may have contained a lot of questions about the sports section where the consensus was poor and the second survey
might have contained a lot of questions on the business section which might have had a positive opinion. Also the two surveys may have been conducted between different subscribers with different opinions about the paper.

The editor would have done well to complement his argument with substantiated statistical evidence on how the act of hiring of more experienced journalists has helped in improving the reporting and writing quality . The editor also fails to mention if there are other possible reasons for improved subscriber growth , for
instance a rival newspaper could have been closed down on charges of corruption leading to the increased subscription of his paper.

While the hiring of experienced journalists may have helped in improving the paper , there is not enough information in the passage to suggest that this is the sole reason for the improvement . Without more detailed and complete information we have no other choice to assume the editor's argument falls flat.

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No. of Characters: 1373 1500
No. of Different Words: 138 200
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.778 0.12

Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 9 15
No. of Words: 274 350
No. of Characters: 1373 1500
No. of Different Words: 138 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.069 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.011 4.6
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Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
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Sentence Length SD: 10.489 7.5
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Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.448 0.35
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Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.13 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5