Art is a complex thing.

Like it is said, "Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder",

but the beholders themselves need not be one among the masses. Personally, I myself
have had numerous situations where I have not understood the intention behind a
piece of art, or the effort that goes into it, but my ability to comprehend its
importance and quality does not affect the level of the artwork itself.

First, let us consider the question of an audience. Art is a form of creative

expression, much the same way as dance or music. It is a beautiful pursuit that
utilizes creative freedom to put what we feel, think or wish to convey, on a
platform. It need not necessarily be intended towards a certain audience in
specific but could have been just for the sake of one's own self-satisfaction. It
can be for multiple and diverse purposes, such as towards an audience to earn
appreciation, just a way of venting out one's emotions on a certain day or
situation, to instigate people into an action, or just aimed at sarcasm and
entertainment among numerous other things. So there need not always be an audience,
and they need not always be the common masses.

Let us now appreciate the importance of art in itself. Art is not always intended
at serving a purpose. The intention behind the piece of art could have been one
among many things. It could have been intended to catalyze a group of supressed
people into an uprising, could have been to convey the importance of greenery,
could just be abstract while illustrating the importance of the sun, or could be
for the common audience to appreciate the importance of cleanliness.
These are but just a few scenarios, since art is limitless. In all these scenarios,
we can fit in a group of hypothetical audience it was intended for. In one, it is a
group of downtrodden people, in another could be meant for a group of chemical
companies, in the next it could be energy intensive carnivals, and in the final one
it could be general public. Numerous works of Da Vinci were intended at different
audiences, such as the Monalisa, The Last supper, and so on.

There are certain other factors that determine the greatness of a piece of art.
First off, greatness in itself, is very subjective. It is a question of
perspective. One might look at a piece of art and find it unattractive, but to me,
it could be a very great work, owing to the period it was done in, the methods used
in its creation, the social circumstances it was done in, the historic value behind
something that has been preserved for a long duration and so on, among many other
things. The origin or story behind a certain work also lends itself to the
importance of a piece of art on so many occasions. It is similar to comparing any
other creative pursuit. One might argue that pop music is better than jazz, folk
dance is better than ballet and so on, but all these are subjective stances that
depend on the audience, and more so because they are all creative pursuits that are
unbound, and open.

There are a number of other reasons which one might consider greatness in different
ways, so these are a few reasons why I disagree with the argument that greatness of
a piece of art is based on mass understanding.

There are a number of fallacious assumptions made in this excerpt. One might look
at them in different ways, but a lot of them lend themselves to invalidating some
claims made through them. I would like to present a few of them below.

The first two lines contain two unstated assumptions which bring us to the initial
points of contention. It is assumed in them, that the quality of reporting and
writing improves with the age of the journalist, and their number. These premises
would be justified if the following question had definite answers - is the
reporting of the older journalists considered good quality by the subscribers
invariantly? If so, then an increase in the number of older journalists would
definitely lead to increase in the perceived quality of the newspaper with respect
to the subscribers. A second question that needs to be answered is this - does the
increase in number of older journalists lead directly to an overall increase in
reporting quality, or does it stifle it due to various factors such as competitive
pressures and a compromise on quality to achieve quicker time-bound reporting.

The next erroneous assumption is that the growth in subscriber base and rating of
reporter quality is due to these changes. There is no direct evidence of this
proving that it was due to the effort in hiring older journalists. It could have
been due to a number of factors such as an increase in quality due to journals'
competitive pressure, a decline in subscriber bases of other journals owing to
various plausible reasons, and so on. So the question that needs to be answered to
validate this assumption is whether the base has grown due to an increase in
quality reporting directly.

The final assumption is that the younger journalists are not quality reporters
because the older ones are. This would only hold true if one were to prove that the
content by younger reporters is not as relatable and of high quality as the
subscribers wish to see and not on par with older journalists.

If these questions were answered, the current excerpt and the arguments presented
in it would hold more accountability and tenability.