Mark Zuckerberg's Expensive Lesson Analysis

Superior Essays
In op-ed articles, writers unleash their opinions about subjects pertaining to just about anything, but what most people fail to realize is just the serious amount of rhetoric the writers put into their articles for the main purpose of convincing a lurking reader. Joe Nocera is an American business journalist who expands his writing spectrum and presents his deep knowledge over a plethora of miscellaneous topics and rhetorical skills as depicted from his op-ed articles “Zuckerberg’s Expensive lesson”, “Aaron Sorkin’s ‘Steve Jobs’ Con”, and “Can E-cigarettes Save Lives” in the New York Times. “Zuckerberg’s Expensive Lesson” is mainly a critical stance on the topic of Mark Zuckerberg’s generous grant to reform the educational systems in Newark …show more content…
Many writers put meaningless quotations from “experts” but Nocera is one of those few individuals who do not. To help clarify his arguments, he uses appropriate citations from experts and authorities. He does not just enlist the help of experts who seem credible in certain topics, but he also uses expert claims that relate to his argument and propels it forward. For example, in “Aaron Sorkin’s ‘Steve Jobs’ Con”, he discloses a statement made by Tom Mallon, a credible historical fictionist about the need to “capture the essence of the real person” which is Nocera’s exact argument in the article-for remade characters in a fiction to be extremely factual. Just the idea that he gets information from Tom Mallon, an expert when it comes to writing fiction about real figures in life, makes Nocera’s argument even more believable to the reader and persuades the reader to consider the fact that Nocera’s words are quite possibly legit. In another op- ed article, “Can E-Cigarettes Save Lives?”, Nocera mentions statements from Matt Myers, the leader of the tobacco control community whose opinion revolves around the need to employ “properly regulated-cigarette marketing .This transmits Nocera’s argument, which was that e-cigarette advertising needs to be responsibly regulated for the general public’s knowledge, to the reader and by using a prominent figure in the tobacco free community(Matt Myers), he advances the level of rhetoric in his passage. By using suitable statements from figures whom are deemed experts in the assertions that Nocera are presenting, his proof for his arguments are seen as legitimate since he lists trustable people’s opinions. Another method Nocera coerces under logos is the use of “factual statistics” in his articles. For instance, in “Can E-Cigarettes Save Lives?”, Nocera mentions “some 42 million American adults still

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