To start the editing process, the first step, of course, is to read the article and try to get a sense of the message the author is going for. This is a bit difficult since it seems that the message at the beginning is not the same message as what we wind up with at the end. From this, I critiqued the ending, adding a comment about how to make the article more consistent with the rest of the article. It seems to have a tense change (not in the grammatical sense) in the sense that it shifts from a critique of present and immediate to a projected future (the potential Hilary Clinton presidential campaign) because the author perceives this future as a "positive example" of how to shift the behavior. As mentioned by David Kaufer, when it comes to policy changes it is important to find positive comparisons that have whatever desired effect(s) the author wants. In this case, though, the "positive comparison" is not one that has actually happened. It is all purely speculation.
Next, I started back at the beginning and went through looking for all the references I believed to be too "high context" or a bit tone-deaf when it comes to the subject matter at hand. The problem I see with this article is that the issue of the Michael Brown shooting is not frivolous or light and I don't believe it to be a good backdrop for an article complaining about too much media coverage. At least, if the author was dead set on this particular focal point than they needed to give it the gravity it deserves underneath the criticism of potentially reprehensible media behavior. To this end, calling Ferguson a "Woodstock" even if that is the way the media treated it seems disrespectful (looking at the guidelines mentioned in Working With Words' chapter “Sexism/Racism/Other -Isms”). I suggested a removal of this particular term.
Then I began to look for things that seemed enthymematic and I found it surprisingly easy to find in an article as short as this. The author was not concise with their meanings yet made several statements that jumped to conclusions (looking at the guidelines about Cohesion and Coherence in Style).
The seventh or eighth paragraph is where the article starts to lose its focus and starts to shift into an argument that doesn't really help the author formulate a solution or argument for a solution. He starts to give positive examples, as Kaufer talks about, but he does not use them as qualifiers since they don't further his argument. There does not seem a point in bringing up positive examples of "national conversation" unless he does something with the examples, which he does not. He simply states, this person does it well at this point in time and this person does it well later while the first person starts to slack. This also does not seem to have much relevance to his point about media specifically being the source of the problem here.
It seems that the author is particularly bothered by "24 hour news" and their need to fill time and space with whatever they can and they have become sloppy—honestly just showing up and watching. However, he does not propose a policy shift or any kind of solution and that becomes a problem when it comes to an article about policy changes. He brings up Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton as presidential candidates and points out that their behavior and strategies are similar to those used by the media but he does nothing further with these examples. It would be a perfectly acceptable shift in subject if it was brought back around to the subject of the media (perhaps if he suggested these figures were responsible for changing the behavior or modeling the behavior so as to influence the media). Instead, he just ends it an almost-conclusion, and almost-there statement about solutions that he himself can't seem to make a solution out of.
Next, I started back at the beginning and went through looking for all the references I believed to be too "high context" or a bit tone-deaf when it comes to the subject matter at hand. The problem I see with this article is that the issue of the Michael Brown shooting is not frivolous or light and I don't believe it to be a good backdrop for an article complaining about too much media coverage. At least, if the author was dead set on this particular focal point than they needed to give it the gravity it deserves underneath the criticism of potentially reprehensible media behavior. To this end, calling Ferguson a "Woodstock" even if that is the way the media treated it seems disrespectful (looking at the guidelines mentioned in Working With Words' chapter “Sexism/Racism/Other -Isms”). I suggested a removal of this particular term.
Then I began to look for things that seemed enthymematic and I found it surprisingly easy to find in an article as short as this. The author was not concise with their meanings yet made several statements that jumped to conclusions (looking at the guidelines about Cohesion and Coherence in Style).
The seventh or eighth paragraph is where the article starts to lose its focus and starts to shift into an argument that doesn't really help the author formulate a solution or argument for a solution. He starts to give positive examples, as Kaufer talks about, but he does not use them as qualifiers since they don't further his argument. There does not seem a point in bringing up positive examples of "national conversation" unless he does something with the examples, which he does not. He simply states, this person does it well at this point in time and this person does it well later while the first person starts to slack. This also does not seem to have much relevance to his point about media specifically being the source of the problem here.
It seems that the author is particularly bothered by "24 hour news" and their need to fill time and space with whatever they can and they have become sloppy—honestly just showing up and watching. However, he does not propose a policy shift or any kind of solution and that becomes a problem when it comes to an article about policy changes. He brings up Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton as presidential candidates and points out that their behavior and strategies are similar to those used by the media but he does nothing further with these examples. It would be a perfectly acceptable shift in subject if it was brought back around to the subject of the media (perhaps if he suggested these figures were responsible for changing the behavior or modeling the behavior so as to influence the media). Instead, he just ends it an almost-conclusion, and almost-there statement about solutions that he himself can't seem to make a solution out of.
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