Group Memo Sharing...Brooke, Group 3 with Alex and Adam

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,