Free Feedback on "All the News”
Hi Ewan,
Thank you for submitting your essay for feedback. You can expect:
- Written feedback on structure and flow
- Notes on clarity and concision (at the sentence/paragraph level)
- "The One Thing" to focus on if you were to revise this piece
- And a video overview of my feedback.
My goal is not just to give you feedback that would improve this single essay but to give you feedback that, if you apply it to future projects, would make you a better writer (by helping you become a better self-editor).
I'm going to work through the drafts in the order they were submitted (you're seventh), and I'll get back to everyone within the next two weeks.
All the best,
Garrett Kincaid
The One Thing
Relate everything back to your main idea.
- Weave it all together, rather than making a patchwork quilt.
- Fewer section headers, less division between ideas — those make the piece feel discontinuous.
- Try to revise this so that it has a maximum of three sub-headers. That will challenge you to transition between topics and to make it clear how each new point relates to your main idea. (Keep the V1 somewhere, but edit and re-publish a new version to the same URL.)
Notes
- Here’s how I understand your thesis (your main idea/claim): More media consumption does not mean more knowledge or wisdom. This is reflected by the line at the end of your intro — “Our appetite for news is endless, yet the more we consume, the further behind we feel.” — and by your final section: “Why More Engagement = Less Informed.”
- Once you’ve clearly identified your main idea, make sure that everything links back to it. You’ve done a great job fleshing out these subsections, but at the moment, they feel disjointed and adjacent to your main argument, rather than part of it.
- Or, in other words, your main idea is in your subtitle: “Online media makes us more angry yet less informed.” Keep coming back to that idea throughout your essay.
- I love your “All That’s Fit to Print” hook. It’s effective and totally drew me in. It felt both new and familiar, because I hadn’t thought of that before, and I knew what point you were getting at. I wasn’t lost or bored but intrigued.
- Great paragraph:
- At the “Binary Narratives” section, I really started to lose the “plot,” meaning that I wasn’t sure how each of these sub-points were contributing to your main idea/claim. And I sort of forgot what your main claim is. That’s partly because your subsections could be made into at least three other essays: (1) on the attention economy and the effects of ad-revenue–driven content, (2) on the polarizing effect of binary narratives, and (3) on the incentive structures that result in hyperbolic headlines and sensational clickbait.
- Instead of writing the subsections as self-contained, write them so that they build on one another and clearly provide evidence for your thesis.
- This is insightful and really well phrased:
- I can tell that you spent considerable time and effort editing this, paying close attention to your language, and I commend you for that. You’re doing a service to your reader that they will (either consciously or unconsciously) appreciate.
- Save the first paragraph in that section, “Chasing Engagement” is tangential. The analysis of headlines is too far from your main idea, and I’m not sure you need it as evidence since what you’re describing is something your reader has certainly experienced firsthand. I’m flagging this because I had an urge to skip past it. I suggest keeping the first paragraph (and editing it to fit in elsewhere) and cutting the two paragraphs about headlines.
- Similar note on the “Social Arena” section: Keep the Elon Musk example, but cut the rest of that section. Even consider expanding the Elon example and use it to say more. Your reader will definitely have heard/read a lot about the modern media landscape. So, the more fresh and unique you can make your take, the better. And specific examples are a great way to do that. You don’t want to only use conceptual/abstract language. Here is the most interesting sentence of that section:
- “Newsroom Myopia” is a great term and an insightful section. Get there sooner by compressing the sub-sections above (and maybe by cutting “Engagement” and “Arena”). This, for instance, is an important point and one that sets your article apart from the others commenting on modern media:
- As a response to my note above, I’m not against you citing sources or statistics. I just found the stats on headlines to be irrelevant to your essay. This stat, on the other hand, is perfect for your piece, especially for the tie-in with your reference to The NYT at the start:
- Try to weave this quote more seamlessly into your argument. Right now, it stands apart, and I think it’s because your explanation of the quote (final sentence in the below) is merely a summary and not a bridge back to your essay.
- This is a well-chosen quote; edit your explanation of it so that you use it to deepen your point, not just to reiterate it.
- Small thing (mechanics): You're using dashes (" - ") where you should be using em dashes (" — ").
- Finally, great job on your title–subtitle combo
“Since 1897, the slogan "All the News That's Fit to Print" has sat atop The New York Times masthead. It made perfect sense in an era when news was physically constrained by the limits of print media. Each day, the number of stories was determined by what could fit within the pages of a newspaper. Editors had to make deliberate choices about what information was most important, what deserved attention, and what would serve their readers.”
“At the heart of this race for attention lies the ad-revenue model - a voracious engine that powers the entire system. The more clicks and engagement, the more revenue flows into the coffers of platforms and media outlets alike. Every headline and every image is a carefully crafted lure, designed to hook a wandering gaze in the marketplace of distraction.”
“Humans are naturally drawn to simplified narratives, especially when faced with complex problems. Our brains prefer clear distinctions - heroes and villains, winners and losers, oppressors and victims - because it simplifies an increasingly complicated world. This framing taps into our cognitive biases and emotional responses, giving us not only someone to root for but, more importantly, someone to blame.”
“One might question whether [Musk] genuinely believes anything that he says, or if he’s simply fueling the machine. When it’s engagement that drives revenue, the truth is of secondary importance.”
“Even for major events that continue to dominate headlines - such as the wars in Ukraine or the Middle East - how much closer are we to understanding why they are happening? Despite the overwhelming flood of daily coverage, many people remain stuck with only a surface-level grasp of these conflicts, formed from the fragmented information they’ve absorbed online.Lost within the clamour of the moment-to-moment coverage is an explanation for why such events are happening. The constant deluge of breaking news tends to sideline the necessary context that might help us truly understand the broader forces at play. We become so focused on the immediate details - the what and the how - that we rarely pause to consider the why.”
Between 2010 and 2019, The New York Times - home to the famous "All the News That’s Fit to Print" slogan - saw a significant increase in the prevalence of prejudice-related terms, with words like “racist” and “sexist” spiking by 638% and 403%, respectively. Similar trends can be observed across other well-regarded publications.
In his book Factfulness, the Swedish academic Hans Rosling writes: “It’s not the media’s role to present the world as it really is. They will always have to compete to engage our attention with exciting stories and dramatic narratives. It is upon us consumers to realise that news is not very useful for understanding the world.” This points to a crucial disconnect between the stories we consume online and the reality we experience in our everyday lives.‘All the News That’s Fit to Click’: Why online media makes us more angry yet less informed.