Q17 - In 1992, a major newspaper

[nanagyanewa]

Hello,

Could someone please help me with this question? I chose C because I assumed that if their circulation has decreased, there probably aren't that many assignments from which the employees could gain valuable training. I don't understand why B is right. Any help will be greatly appreciated

[bbirdwell]

Hi there. So, that was not a good assumption that you made regarding circulation and assignments. There is no correlation between the two given in the argument.

It is reasonable to infer, though, that after 10 years on the job, "training" is long since over. To tell someone who's been on the job for 10 years that they make less than their peers because they get valuable training is pretty poor reasoning. That's how unpaid internships are justified, not low salaries for veteran employees.

[rsmorale]

I chose C initially too, but upon reviewing the question I realized that the newspaper need not be widely circulated in order to have valuable training assignments. It could very well be a local superstar. The reasoning in C alone does not weaken the argument.

Brian's explanation for B better suits the bill. If most employees were 10+ year veterans...where exactly would they be moving on to? Why would they even need the training? It's a huge jump to make, but the answer choice just needs to cast doubt on the justification, not destroy it completely.

[goriano]

Does (A) strengthen the argument instead of weaken?

Also, I'm having trouble making the assumption that after 10+ years on the job, reporters wouldn't be receiving any more "valuable training" that could compensate for their low salaries. Isn't there something like "continuous improvement" in the workforce?

[kaseyb002]

I suppose I'm setting the bar too high, but the 10 year assumption seemed like too big of a leap for me. Perhaps to get the real training you need in newspaper before you really become a great writer takes like 20 years.

I notice I get the most questions wrong when I don't understand what the LSAT writers are trying to hint at. In this case, "in 10 years, training should be over".

[WaltGrace1983]

I chose C initially too, but upon reviewing the question I realized that the newspaper need not be widely circulated in order to have valuable training assignments. It could very well be a local superstar. The reasoning in C alone does not weaken the argument.

But all this reasoning about valuable training and circulation is irrelevant. We don't care about the actual newspaper; we care about what the newspaper employees get paid. The newspaper could be a magazine stationed in someone's garage that gets circulated to 4 houses. Either way, this doesn't matter at all! We want to talk about pay and how this justification about training isn't adequate.

Does (A) strengthen the argument instead of weaken?

I think it justifies the practice of paying less $$$ a little bit more because it shows that the chasm between what the newspaper pays and what its competitors pay isn't that big of a deal. However, this is too limited of a scope (we are talking about averages and this answer choice talks about specific roles). Either way, this definitely doesn't weaken!

Also, I'm having trouble making the assumption that after 10+ years on the job, reporters wouldn't be receiving any more "valuable training" that could compensate for their low salaries. Isn't there something like "continuous improvement" in the workforce?

I see what your saying but I would argue that this still isn't enough of a reason to justify a lower pay. You are making a blanket statement - jobs will give you continuous training throughout your career. I agree. However, does this justify why ONE company pays less than ANOTHER company? Not at all! From your statement, we would assume that every company should still be equal if training was the only thing being considered (and in this case, it is!).

You see what I mean?

(C), (D), and (E) are totally irrelevant. (A) kind of strengthens. (B) is the only one that makes sense. We can very reasonably assume that training is not a reason to justify lower $$$ if the employees have been working there for so long.

[mr13n]

I, too, chose A because I felt that a senior reporter would have had more experience than a regular one, but it never makes that comparison. B is better at pointing out the flaw in the justification.

[hayleychen12]

I still don't understand why B is the right answer, since in the stimulus, it says" valuable training they receive through their assignments", I thought that the "training" here is not the "training for new employees" but the training experience that be constantly provided.

[ohthatpatrick]

Yeah, unfortunately they mean "training" as in "training new / young employees".

Even though, in a sense, we ALWAYS keep learning no matter how long we work at a job, so in that sense "the training never ends", the "training phase" of a job is clearly understood to be a finite phase in the beginning of one's employment.

In the context of "We're paying them less, because look at the experience they're getting!", we can judge "training" to be something that provides extra value.

People will often agree to be low paid or unpaid interns when they are looking to gain valuable experience they don't already have.

That's the sort of "training" this executive is selling.

If you had worked at this paper for more than ten years, and you were making less than the average salary at a competing paper, wouldn't you be bothered?

If the boss said, "Yeah, but look at the training you're getting!"
you might be like, "I've been reporting for over a decade! I'm an experienced reporter who deserves to be paid more."

[AbhishekM843]

If the boss said, "Yeah, but look at the training you're getting!"
you might be like, "I've been reporting for over a decade! I'm an experienced reporter who deserves to be paid more."

But, we don't know if the employees who worked there for 10 years and the people who are getting paid less are overlapping.

I thought they could be mutually exclusive, and in that scenario, 51% of the reporters had 10 years experience and they got paid the same amount as competitive newspapers, and the remaining 49% of the reporters are new and got paid significantly less, thus skewing the average.

So, B doesn't have to weaken the argument.

[LeeJ891]

This is a great question for the MP tutors to gain credibility by acknowledging that the question was poorly worded.

It's such a huge jump to assume that because a journalist has worked for 10 + years that they no longer would benefit from valuable training they receive from their newspaper. Imagine I am a journalist who has worked for twenty years at my local paper and now work got a job at the New York Times and the papers sends me around the world for my reporting . After I complain for receiving a lower salary than journalists at NYT competitors, an executive at the paper says that the lower salary I get is justified bc of the wealth of experiences the newspaper affords me when they send me all over the world. Finding out I had 10+ years experience already at my local paper wouldn't undermine that executive at all.

[Laura Damone]

Hi LeeJ891,

Sometimes, LSAT questions test whether a student can sniff out the best answer from among a steaming pile of bad ones. This is one of those questions. A, C, D and E are waaaay out of scope. So that leaves us with B.

Does the fact that most reporters worked there for over 10 years destroy the executive's argument? No. For the reasons you site, we can definitely imagine a scenario in which a particular kind of paper could offer particular kinds of assignments that serve as valuable training even for seasoned reporters.

However, the task of a weaken question is not to destroy the argument, but to weaken it. If you have to create a back-story for why an answer would not weaken the argument in some particular circumstance, it probably weakens the argument enough to be correct.

I advise my students that there's No BS allowed on the LSAT, by which I mean "No Back-Stories!" If you have to create a backstory to justify an answer, you shouldn't pick that answer. If you have to create a backstory to eliminate an answer, you shouldn't eliminate that answer.

Hope this helps!