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- 声望
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发表于 2009-5-30 03:25:57
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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.'
Retrospecting the feature of lowest-selling magazine and the change of its rivals, some newsmagazines, supposing that the international news to be featured on front cover totally, or perhaps mainly, adversely affecting the sales in the past three years, and then mentioning a fact that the expanding expenditure in their office of foreign news agency to report on international news, the author accordingly suggests that they should cut down the amount of reported international news and front covers’ international news. However, we can easily find that there are so many factors affecting the selling of a magazine, and above all that the author mentioned was unconvincing and ridiculous.
The author first needs to determine the relative proportion of magazine-customers who choose magazines depending on their attractive front covers rather than any other reasons. It is a well known fact that the content of a magazine is critical in ensuring the quality of it, in other words, the popularity or the gorgeous market position of it. People would be looking for accurate and insightful articles inside the magazine, rather than, what is shown on the front cover. And if it is a national magazine, publishing most of the national and important international news, the readers of national news would be willing to afford it, even if it features international news stories on its front cover, as long as it provides readers with quality national news also, at this time, the effect of front cover is negligible. On the other hand, the belated or superficial international news can account for the low sales when the magazine just featured international news on its front cover. In such cases, readers would prefer TV, radio or internet to know such news faster and more insightful. After knowing about them from these alternate media options, they would not prefer to read about them again in a magazine. The condition would be further worsened if the magazine fails to provide thorough analysis of the issue. Above all, the selling of a magazine is judged by compositive determinants. Without ruling out these possibilities, the author's implied claim that readers don't like to read international news is unsubstantiated.
Another important thing to consider is the real reason that competing magazines cut down international news as a front cover, and the effect subsequently. We can imagine that, if they decide to change their magazines’ styles and types, as kinds of reasons, from reporting international news to national news, they may decrease the number of cover stories about international news. We can also imagine that the global economic depression may make the capital of newsmagazines publisher shorten, so they are too tough to sustain their old business plan, and then come a series of changes. However, change is not always good, and there are not exactly two same leaves. Even the action of controlling international news featured as front cover put it over, we cannot say whether it is suitable for the poorest-selling magazine.
Finally, even though the uncomfortable sale is associated with the boring international news front cover, we cannot deprive the expenditure on international news reporting institution for granted. Because we must make sure that the international news is unvalued anymore. Without providing strong quantitative evidence that the foreign service is completely disliked by the readers, shutting the foreign service would be a loss for the magazine, as it must have incurred a heavy loss of initial investments for such a service. So, at this stage, it might be beneficial to continue maintaining the foreign service, and serve the readers of international news.
To sum up, the author should do a survey to explain why their magazine maintain such a low selling in the past three years, then he may need to provide evidence to support the facts that readers dislike international news and reducing the emphasis on international news would increase the number of readers. |
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