Can someone please grade my sample essay? Its my first try and would love any feedback.
Thank you

The following appeared in an announcement issued by the publisher of The Mercury, a weekly newspaper:

“Since a competing lower-priced newspaper, The Bugle, was started five years ago, The Mercury’s circulation has declined by 10,000 readers. The best way to get more people to read The Mercury is to reduce its price below that of The Bugle, at least until circulation increases to former levels. The increased circulation of The Mercury will attract more businesses to buy advertising space in the paper.”

Discuss how well reasoned . . . etc.

The argument claims that by reducing its price below that of the The Bugle, The Mercury will gain back it’s readers and attract more businesses to buy ad space in the paper. This argument relies on assumptions that have absolutely no clear evidence. We will discuss several of these assumptions including, that the decline in The Mercury’s circulation was directly due to The Bugle. That a lower price for the Mercury will result in an increase in circulation and finally that businesses will buy more ad space with increased circulation of The Mercury. Without clear evidence and more information, this argument has no feet to stand on.

First, the argument readily assumes that a decline in the Mercury’s circulation was due to the start up of The Bugle five years ago. The argument fails to provide any evidence for this claim. Perhaps the decline in circulation was due to a decrease in the quality of the newspaper. Maybe readers prefer to read the Mercury online and therefore do not require the paper form anymore. The argument could have been much clearer if it had showed a direct correlation between The Bugle and the decrease in circulation for The Mercury.

Secondly, the argument claims that lowering the price of The Mercury below that of The Bugle will result in circulation increasing. This is again very weak and unsupported. There is no guarantee that lowering the price will increase the circulation. Also, lowering the price may not be an option for The Mercury. Lowering the price may lower their profit margins so much that they are unable to keep the paper in business. They would have to do a cost/benefit analysis to determine if this was even a viable option. However, without a guarantee that it would increase circulation, it would be a futile strategy. The argument is very unconvincing and does not provide the necessary details or evidence to give it any strength

Finally, the argument assumes that businesses will buy advertising space once the Mercury’s circulation increases. This argument tells us that businesses only make their ad space decisions based on the circulation of the paper. This is a weak and flawed assumption. Businesses may take many things into account before making a decision on which paper to advertise in. For example, when I owned my M&M Meat franchise, we made our advertising decisions based on many things. What demographic were we reaching? What was the cost of the ad space? How reliable is the distribution system? These were just a few of the decisions we faced. The argument in the passage would have been much more convincing had it provided more evidence regarding the businesses decision process.

The argument is weak, flawed and unconvincing. It fails to provide evidence to support the argument that a decline in the Mercury’s circulation was due to the start up of The Bugle five years ago. The claim could have been strengthened had it showed us a direct correlation between the two papers. Also, if it would have shown some evidence that a business would make its advertising decisions based solely on circulation. Without this information, the argument remains unsubstantiated and open to debate.

Hi. Overall I think you have hit on most / all the main flaws in the argument. The main flaws are : readers buy a paper on price alone (maybe content is the problem), that advertisers base their choice of advertising medium on circulation alone (demographics are often considered), and also the possibility that The Mercury readers read the paper in another medium (online version). I have bold / modified areas I thought were weak / grammatically incorrect. I'm by no means an expert.

The argument claims that the best way to increase readership and thus attract more businesses to advertise in the paper is to reduce its price. While this suggestion may appear plausible on the surface, a deeper analysis reveals that it is not supported by facts.
Firstly, the author states that since the introduction of the Bugle, the circulation of the Mercury has declined by 10000 readers. In doing so, the author implies a cause-and-effect relationship between the two without providing any reason for the same. The loss in readership could be a result of a host of reasons including readers preferring to read online articles instead of papers in general or due to poor content being published by the Mercury.
Secondly, the author assumes that it is the difference in price that is the key reason for the loss of readership, and compensating for the difference by reducing the price will remedy the problem. Such an assumption adds to the unreliable nature of the author's argument as there could be other reasons for loss or readership including better reading content being provided by the Bugle, coverage of more important issues by the publishers of the Bugle than by the publishers of the Mirror or even better marketing by the sales team of the Bugle.
Finally, the author jumps abruptly to the conclusion that reducing the price of the paper will attract more businesses to buy advertising space in the paper. This conclusion depends on two assumptions, neither of which is substantiated by any facts. The first being that a reduction in price will regain lost readership. It could be possible that the loss in readership was not due to a difference in price and therefore, any reduction in price is unlikely to remedy it. The second being that if readership is regained, it will attract more businesses to advertise in the Mercury. Although it may be possible to attract more businesses because of high readership, it is not a certainty as businesses may target specific readers who may or may not be readers of the Mercury or businesses may find online advertising a better medium. Unless the author provides more comprehensive reasoning for the assumptions mentioned above, the argument lacks substance and appears to be put together using contentious assumptions.

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