Group 3 Memos

Memo 1

Title: New Age Media Love

Date: 5/27/11

Decision: Reject

Dear Author,

Let me first start off by thanking you for giving me the opportunity to peer review you paper. After reading over your piece, I believe that the argument that you are trying to make is a good one; however the way you go about stating your argument could be worded better. You’re argument would probably be easier to defend if it was something along the lines of, “The media has the potential to change some peoples lives for the better”. You essay is relevant but I’m not sure about it’s timeliness.

It would seem that the main argument that you are trying to defend in your paper is that the media is changing everybody’s lives for the better. Then the rest of you paper is you talking about how the media has impacted your life for the better through out many stages of your life. The main problem I see with your paper is that there are place where you tend to generalize. The way I will peer edit your paper is by breaking it down paragraph by paragraph.

1. Your intro paragraph wasn’t very compelling: you didn’t do/say much to intrigue me as a reader. You need a better attention grabber. Although you did a good job leading your introduction into a preliminary thesis, I feel like you could have done a better job trying to be compelling. Maybe start the paper off by talking about some interesting television shows, or maybe start the essay off with an attention grabbing question like, “Have you ever wondered how much modern media has affected our lives?” One last thing I saw about your intro paragraph was, your thesis sounded like it generalized way too much. It seems like you made a big generalization by saying that the media can improve everybody’s lives for the better. However this may be true for you, it may not be true for everybody else in all cases.

2. In your first paragraph you talk a lot about your younger years growing up watching television. You specifically mention spongebob as a character that you watched on TV. You talked about how spongebob was a show that helped people improve their lives for the better because it teaches people to be content with the way their life is. I feel as though this is a generalization. Because, again, not all children will view spongebob in the same way that you did.

3. In your second body paragraph you talk about how during your teenage years you learned a lot through television shows on MTV and other channels similar to it. You stated that watching is responsible for making you the social person you are today. Again although this maybe true for you I doubt it will hold true for everyone else who watches TV. Also in this paragraph that parent have lives and they don’t have the time to teach their children some of the things they learn through television. I’m not sure how much I agree with this claim because it seems that most parents these days do not want their children watching television constantly.

4. In your third body paragraph you talk about how television has given you a way to be informed about what is going on in the world without hearing about a bunch of depressing things. This paragraph you seemed to lose your argument. You started out by talking about how some news channels are boring, mundane, etc. This seems to be disputing your argument on how the media improves everyone’s lives for the better. So this paragraph confused me.

5. In your conclusion you stated all of your claims again, then you made a statement about the three stooges and about the Supreme Court Justices. You said more people knew the three stooges than the Supreme Court justices. Depending on how you look at this, it could be good or bad. For your argument it is good, however most people would probably view this as a bad thing.

I believe that your essay was too generalized in the way it tried to make its arguments. My advice to you is that, if you are going to do apiece on the media make it more specific. Make it something that you can back up with more solid evidence because most of your evidence was from your personal experience.

Sincerely,

Your Peer Reviewer

Memo 2

Title: New Age Media Love

Date: 05/26/2011
Decision: Revise and Resubmit

Dear Author:

Thank you for allowing me to review this paper and work on my skills as a peer editor. It was a very insightful piece, and I appreciated the points you made. Images you painted, and your points in general were wonderful, just very argumentative with each other. The paper needs a fair amount of work, but I think that with some good revisions, this paper could definitely be the type of paper commonplace is looking for.

Your descriptive wording in the first paragraph alone made me want to read this whole paper through, but finding a clear defined thesis was difficult. Your thesis seems to be that you want people to take a look at television shows throughout the ages and try to base their life a bit off of how the characters act. Then you seem to switch to an idea that the act of watching television prepared you for life. Finally, you take a sarcastic tone with the reader, and imply that the media is a mindless tool for entertainment that too many people use for the wrong reasons. You don't clearly define what your thesis is in the opening paragraph. With that said, they are definitely two very creative ideas, and I think you supported them pretty well. I liked your use of spongebob since I still watch it occasionally to this day, and have never looked at how he takes all of his failures in stride and manages to keep his fun-loving demeanor at all times. Your arguments are all very compelling as I can see how I followed a similar path, television is always timely but, due to your changing of writing styles, I don't believe it is written in a timely manner. Tying in the viewing of television to social aspects is also relevant to the commonplace audience.

Ideas for your revision:

- I think that one thing you should do is to combine your first two paragraphs or give at least a little example of what your thesis means. As I said earlier, it was difficult to find your thesis, but with an example explaining it, I think it would be greatly enhanced.

- You might want to lose the end of the spongebob paragraph. Saying that you should be content with however you end up in your life might not be the best end to a paragraph, or even a good idea in general. That seems to say that it's taught you not to have dreams. I would potentially bring in the episode where he and patrick meet King Neptune, and have the fry-cook battle. Then include how it shows that even though being a fry-cook isn't necessarily what he always wanted to do, he dreams big in whatever career, or situation he is in.

- In your MTV and Comedy Central paragraph, you say, “if it were not for television, I would be antisocial.” I do not necessarily agree. This takes away from your credibility as it is not 100% accurate. You could learn from many different sources, so instead suggest that it facilitated your socializing. I would also not answer your question which occurs a little later in that paragraph. Leaving it as a rhetorical question might engage the reader better and make the essay hit harder.

- At the end of your third paragraph you take a more sarcastic tone which makes me wonder if the whole paper was not sarcastic. You wrote, “Letting television shows take the responsibility of rearing a child is the only logical option.” This seems like a very over the top statement, and makes me question this whole paper. If this paper is sarcastic, you need to up the levels earlier. Your examples really help your thesis, but if it is sarcastic, they very much hurt the sarcasm by proving the opposite of your point.

- By the time I finished reading this paper I almost became angry. You had a point with the first part of this paper, and changed to a sarcastic tone against television by the end. If you are going to be sarcastic, you need to do it through the entirety of the paper and over exaggerate it. I would have stopped reading this on commonplace, if I were just reading the article for fun, due to the sudden change. You need to choose, either the sarcastic or the serious route, and stick with it. Either way could be a really good paper topic, but having both with the crossover in the middle makes this a bad essay.

Sincerely,

Commonplace Editor

Memo 3

Title: New Age Media Love
Date: 05/24/2011
Decision: Revise and Resubmit

Dear author,

It is a great pleasure for me to share your insights on the positive impacts of Media Age on this new generation that you belong. You demonstrated highly developed critical thinking skills in the analysis the influences of media and how it helped shape your moral values, social skills and enabled you to become an informed but also light-hearted member of the world. As a reader, I sense your profound fondness towards media through your words. However, I cannot recommend this essay for publication on Commonplace without further revision on your part.

In this article, you recounted your own story as evidences of the positive influences of media. As you stated, growing up with “sensory-overloaded” media programs as music numbers and flashing images, you developed the ability to concentrate on multiple things at the same time. As your personal experience has illustrated, media shaped your morally as an individual, protected you from the bleak outlook of turning into an antisocial by providing you with the opportunities to “sit down with your older siblings,” and how it sorted out entertaining news from dull, insipid programs like those of C-SPAN and PBS, entertained and informed you of the “small portion of” the world, as Taylor Swift’s latest news, which you actually care about. You expressed your love for the media and yearned for more of it.

You successfully focused your discussion on a timely topic. The title of this article, “New Age Media Love”, captured your audiences immediately. Your emotional expressions and usages of words as “love”, “amazing” and “blessing” clearly demonstrated that you actually cared about what you wrote. Your ideas are fresh and informing, and you used vivid personal anecdotes to tell the different side of the story. Your unique voice stands out among the prevailing criticisms of media influence and surely intrigued resonance in your audience who, like you, grew up in the media age. Not only did you pick a topic that concerned most people, your opinions surely made contribution to the ongoing conversation of media influence.

However, there is a lot to do to transform your argument into a compelling one. The manuscript is relevant to Commonplace’s audience; as an editor, I am also confident that your work targeted the ideal audience. The largest problem with this manuscript is the lack of solid evidences.

Throughout your argument, you used your personal experiences as the only source of evidences. I am not saying that personal anecdotes are unreliable evidences, but they are not powerful ones. You failed to establish your public persona. As a reader, I see no evidence that why your love for media necessarily proved that it is influencing people positively. You argument would be more compelling if you could persuade you audience of your credibility by some objective standards, for example, how do your teachers think of you? Are you well-adjusted in your college? Do other people think you are fearless, persistent and social as you claimed to be? It’s important to convince your audience that you are a reliable source if you were going to use your personal experiences as your primary evidences.

Also, avoid stating claims that are hard to prove. There are several places that you might want to fix in your revision.

1. In your third paragraph, you stated that “one could that that, if it were not for television, I would be antisocial.” This is a bold hypothesis, yet you provided inadequate evidences to back it up. You argued that it was the “simple interactions” as “sitting down and watch television” with your siblings that spared you of the risks of becoming antisocial. Without further evidences, I am not at all convinced that you would have become antisocial if you missed such interactions. To make this claim more compelling, you might find it helpful to explain in details how interacting with your siblings improved your social skills. Maybe it helps you learn how to do small talks? Or maybe it makes it less intimidating to hang out with people that are older than you? Providing further explanations.

2. In the same paragraph, you stated that because parents were often busy working, “letting television shows take the responsibility of rearing a child is the only logical option.” This is an arbitrary claim, while there is none evidence that could support it. How do you know that this is the “only” option? Have you examine other options like hiring private tutors and day care centers? Such claims would greatly undermine you credibility as the author. To solve this problem, you might want to consider modifying the claim, or back this up with compelling evidences that qualifies the Commonplace criterions as ethos, logos and pathos.

3. In the fourth paragraph, you stated that “I may not be grasping the seriousness of the different issues at hand, but why would I take life that serious? It’s only going to end soon, according to these mainstream news networks.” It might be greatly helpful if you could specify which mainstream news networks that you got such impression from, and explain why they may suggest such information.

4. In the second paragraph, you used the example of Spongebob to illustrate how media shaped you moral values and taught you life lessons. However, you might want to provide more context of the story of Spongebob. For now, as a reader, I cannot understand how the fact that he loves working at his local burger place and cannot pass the test to het his driver’s license can inspire you to be fearless. It would be great if you can explain your statement in details so to establish your credibility.

5. In the very last paragraph, you claimed that media made it easier for us to live day after day “in the depressing world.” As I mentioned above, you might find it helpful to explain to your audience why you think so, and from what basis you establish your argument and perspectives, because many people may not find such claims convincible.

To summarize, if you want your argument to be compelling to your audience, you have to find strong evidences to support them; and to qualify your statements as strong, you have to consider ethos, pathos and logos while constructing your thesis. You did a good job in applying pathos, but to get your essay presented to wider Commonplace audience, you might want to strengthen the ethos and logos.

The topic is certainly relevant to the audience, as we all live in the media age. However, in your enthusiastic eulogy of media, you somehow did not consider how your audience may respond to your claims. First of all, you failed to establish your credible public persona, as I mentioned in the beginning. Also, your argument is supported only by your personal experience, which has mainly two negative effects:

1. It distances the audience. It is hard to intrigue resonance in them using only your story. How can you ensure that you are representative of your generation? You should state evidences to show that you really are. Otherwise, this article can only be interpreted as your personal perspectives, and not to be generalized to a wider public.

2. Apart from explaining why you are representative of your generation, you might also want to avoid another negative effect of your narration: the lack of persuasive power. You explained in details how you grew under the influence of media and how it positively influenced you. The readers might ask, so what? You should convince your readers to care about your story, which is crucial, if you want to keep your own story as primary evidences. To adjust this problem, you might want to incorporate some objective statistics and authoritative comments about the positive effects of media on your generation; it doesn’t have to be long, but you should add them to the end of your argument to convince your audience that your story is somehow connected to the large picture.

Overall, the tone of the essay is appropriate for the Commonplace audience; the conversational, casual style serves your goals of communicating perfectly, and I am sure that it does appeal to a part of your readers. However, you want to avoid such insouciance permeating the very core of your argument, which should remain serious and convincing. Again, strengthen your claims with solid evidence, avoid groundless assumption, and relate your argument to the larger social context; then your essay would be much better, and more suitable for Commonplace publication.

Good luck with your revision. I hope you find my suggestion helpful.

Hope to see your article published on Commonplace!

Sincerely,