Please review/grade my AWA

I'm concerned about whether my third and fourth paragraphs seem underdeveloped compared to the second; I spent way too much time on the second paragraph and ended up having to rush through the rest of the essay.

Thank you in advance for any input you can give!

(I've reread this essay a few times and am aware of the some of the grammatical errors and awkward sentence structure. Hopefully it doesn't take away too much from the essay overall.)

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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.

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In response to a decline in circulation, the publisher of The Mercury argues that the price of the newspaper should be reduced below that of a competing newspaper, The Bugle. The argument claims that such a price reduction is the best way to restore readership to The Mercury. However, stated in this way, the argument relies on faulty leaps of logic and poor reasoning. The argument’s conclusion relies on assumptions for which there is no clear evidence and is therefore unconvincing and flawed.

First of all, the publisher readily assumes that the competing newspaper is responsible for the decline in readership among The Mercury. However, while it is true that The Mercury’s circulation has declined by 10,000 readers since The Bugle was started five years ago, correlation does not equal causation. There is no evidence given that shows that The Mercury’s decline in circulation was due to The Bugle. For all we know, there were other changes made during that five-year period that caused the decline in readership. For example, we currently live in the Internet age, and it is entirely possible that people dropped their subscriptions to The Mercury in favor of obtaining their news online. The publisher could readily strengthen its argument in this regard if it could provide statistics showing that this five-year period saw not only a drop in readership among The Mercury, but a corresponding and comparable rise in readership among The Bugle. This would bolster the inference that readers are actually changing their newspaper subscriptions instead of dropping subscriptions altogether.

In addition, the publisher fails to consider the full ramifications of lower newspaper prices. It is true that a lower price might result in increased readership as people opt for the cheaper newspaper. However, lower prices would also mean lower revenues and consequently lower profits. Depending on how far the revenues drop, the newspaper could be forced to make cuts as a result, which might have a devastating impact on the quality of The Mercury. This would then drive readers away, which would be quite the ironic fallout!

Another potential unforeseen consequence is that, by lowering the price to below that of The Bugle, the publisher could inadvertently start a tit-for-tat price war with The Bugle’s publisher. After all, what’s to stop The Bugle’s publisher from lowering The Bugle’s price in response? If that were to happen, the publisher of The Mercury would be faced with the option of lowering The Mercury’s price once again, which would lower profits even further, or once again be faced with the possibility of readers defecting to a cheaper newspaper.

In conclusion, the publisher’s argument that the price of The Mercury should be reduced in order to compete with The Bugle is flawed and unconvincing for the above-mentioned reasons. The argument’s conclusion could be considerably strengthened if the publisher were to address all the potential contributing factors to The Mercury’s decline in readership. In order to assess the merits of the argument, it is essential to have full knowledge of all the relevant facts, which the publisher unfortunately does not provide. Without this information, the argument in favor of a price reduction therefore remains unsubstantiated and open to debate.