Bunuel wrote:
Poetry journal patron: Everybody who publishes in Poetry journal patron: Everybody who publishes in The Brick Wall Review has to agree in advance that if a poem is printed in one of its regular issues, the magazine also has the right to reprint it, without monetary compensation, in its annual anthology. The Brick Wall Review makes enough money from sales of its anthologies to cover most operating expenses. So, if your magazine also published an anthology of poems first printed in your magazine, you could depend less on donations. After all, most poems published in your magazine are very similar to those published in The Brick Wall Review.
Which one of the following, if true, most weakens the patron’s argument?
(A) Neither The Brick Wall Review nor the other magazine under discussion depends on donations to cover most operating expenses.
(B) Many of the poets whose work appears in The Brick Wall Review have had several poems rejected for publication by the other magazine under discussion.
(C) The only compensation poets receive for publishing in the regular issues of the magazines under discussion are free copies of the issues in which their poems appear.
(D) The Brick Wall Review depends on donations to cover most operating expenses not covered by income from anthology sales.
(E) The Brick Wall Review’s annual poetry anthology always contains a number of poems by famous poets not published in the regular issues of the magazine.
EXPLANATION FROM Fox LSAT
I don’t love this question. Please don’t worry too much about it.
The conclusion is, “You could depend less on donations if you did an anthology.” The evidence for this assertion is the example of another, similar magazine (The Brick Wall Review) that does anthologies and thereby covers most of its expenses. We are asked to weaken this argument.
A) I don’t think this is a very good weakener, because even if the poetry journal doesn’t depend on donations to cover “most” operating expenses, it’s still possible that they depend “some” on donations, and an anthology might still be a good idea that would help them depend “less” on donations. So I don’t like this answer.
B) I don’t see how anybody getting rejected for publication is possibly relevant. No way.
C) I don’t see how the poets’ compensation could be relevant.
D) If this is true, then the example magazine (Brick Wall Review) that created an anthology that supposedly made money still does depend on donations for some expenses. But we don’t know if there were a lot of expenses or just a few expenses, and even if there were a lot of expenses, the argument could always be made that the Brick Wall Review, without its anthology, would have to depend a lot
more on donations. So this is a poor weakener, I suppose. We can make a case for it at least, even if it’s a **** one. Best answer so far, even though it sucks.
E) At first I didn’t think that the fame of the poets could be relevant, and wanted to eliminate this answer. But fame is really just a distraction. The recommendation in the conclusion of the argument was, “Make an anthology of poems first printed in your magazine… you’ll make money.” If E is true, then the anthology used for comparison may have made money because it printed a lot of poems
not first published in regular issues of the magazine. So the recommendation to reprint a lot of stuff that was already printed in the magazine is not necessarily reliable, and this is our answer. Again, this is a really tricky answer because it actually doesn’t matter whether or not they are famous. What matters is whether or not they were included in the regular issues of the magazine.
Our answer is E.