Newspaper editors should not allow reporters to write the he

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Newspaper editors should not allow reporters to write the headlines for their own stories. The reason for this is that, while the headlines that reporters themselves write are often clever, what typically makes them clever is that they allude to little-known information that is familiar to the reporter but that never appears explicitly in the story itself.

Which of the following, if true, most strengthens the argument?

(A) The reporter who writes a story is usually better placed than the reporters' editor is to judge what the story's most newsworthy features are.
(B) To write a headline that is clever, a person must have sufficient understanding of the story that the headline accompanies.
(C) Most reporters rarely bother to find out how other reporters have written stories and headlines about the same events that they themselves have covered.
(D) For virtually any story that a reporter writes, there are at least a few people who know more about the story's subject matter than does the reporter.
(E) The kind of headlines that newspaper editors want are those that anyone who has read a reporter's story in its entirety will recognize as clever.

What's the best approach to determine the answer?

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by EconomistGMATTutor » Thu Nov 02, 2017 5:45 am
The conclusion: Newspaper editors should not allow reporters to write the headlines for their own stories. (Conclusions often use the word "should.")

The evidence: The headlines that reporters write allude to little-known information that never appears explicitly in the story itself.

Assumption: There's something undesirable about headlines that allude to info not given in the story. If this were NOT true, then what's wrong with the reporters writing the headlines? Choice E says that desirable headlines refer only to information given in the story itself. This strengthens the conclusion.

Choice A doesn't have anything to say about headlines. The comparison it makes is irrelevant.
Choice B doesn't get into what newspaper editors find desirable. This choice might be true, but its truth doesn't affect the argument.
Choice C is wholly irrelevant.
Choice D might be true, might not be true . . . it has no bearing on the argument.

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