Arguement 173 by kulewy531

kulewy531UID: 2603031

TOPIC: ARGUMENT173 - The following is a memorandum issued by the publisher of a newsmagazine, Newsbeat, in the country of Dinn.

"Our poorest-selling magazine issues over the past three years were those that featured international news stories on their front covers. Over the same period, competing news-magazines have significantly decreased the number of cover stories that they devote to international news. Moreover, the cost of maintaining our foreign bureaus to report on international news is increasing. Therefore, we should decrease our emphasis on international news and refrain from displaying such stories on our magazine covers."
WORDS: 305
TIME: 00:45:00
DATE: 2010-2-13 下午 05:39:09

In the argument, they writer concluded that the publisher of the newsmagazine should decrease the number of international news and remove international new from the magazine covers. The main reason the editor holds is that covers with international news have a negative influence on selling. To support this reason, he cites the fact that those magazines with international news front covers are the worst selling ones and competing magazines are decreasing the number of this kind of magazines. Another reason is that the cost of reporting international news is increasing. Though the argument seems reasonable at the first sight, yet further consideration reflects that it suffers from some logical flaws.

To begin with the evidence the arguer cites cannot ensure the soundness of his reason. First, the fact that magazines with international news covers have decreasing sales is probably not caused by the contents of the covers but caused by the poor design of it. The readers might be interesting of the contents of the news but was dissatisfied with the cover designer's work. The cause-and-effect relationship between the negative effects of the covers and the poor-selling is not stable, unless other kinds of reasons are ruled out. Moreover, the arguer made the false analogy that the publisher of this magazine should do as his competitors do. Considering that the conditions are different for each kind of magazine, this thought is not reasonable.

Even admit that those covers with international news exert bad effects on selling，the action of remove them is not probably the best choice. In the argument, the arguer express that other magazines take the method mentioned above.
This situation might provide an opportunity for the publisher. If the publisher took the method of improving the quality of the covers, he would easily defeat his competitors for his magazine is unique and distinctive from others.

In addition, the arguer failed to see that profit is not determined by only one factor. In fact, almost all kinds of costs are fluctuating. Though the cost of maintaining foreign bureaus is increasing, probably other kinds of costs such as the expense of printing and salary are decreasing at the same time. Even if the total expense rises, possibly after the improvement of the magazine, the revenue will increase accordingly. And thus the profit will increase.

To sum up, the conclusion of the argument is not a stable one, since the arguer carelessly ignored many related factors and is too harried to make the conclusion. To make it more convincing, the arguer should rule out other possibilities. Probably, he could conduct a survey to find out what kind of factor causes the dissatisfaction and take as many solutions as he can into consideration and choose the best one.