When I read these two paragraphs, I found there were more words that were not Familiar to me than that [those] in paragraph six and paragraph seven. So first of all, I picked all the new words and looked then[them]up in the dictionary. After that, I began to read the article sentence by sentence.
In Paragraph six, the second sentence puzzled me. “A number of companies recently in the news know all too well the public impact of internal decision.” I had never seen the usage of “know too well”. Is “all too” used to modify “know” or it is connected with “well”? I didn’t know, so I consulted the reference book, in which it says the expression “all too” is used to emphasize that something happens to a greater extent or degree than is pleasant or desirable. Similarly, “only too” is also used in this way. The phrase “a number of companies recently in the news” refers to companies who attracted the attention of the media---in this case, for negative reasons. Some places of the sentence “And Texaco’s failure to handle racial discrimination within its own ranks will remain in the public consciousness for years” made me think for a while. Here “within its ranks” means “within the company”. “…will remain in the public consciousness for years” can be understood that “…will make the public remember for a long time”.
In the following sentence, there is a noun “prospective employees”. What is the definition of it? By looking it up in the dictionary, I know it has several meanings. One is to be or to occur; another is future; the last is possible. In my opinion, none of them is the correct meaning. Maybe the meaning “possible” is somewhat reasonable. According to the sentence and considering about the reality, I suppose it refers to “most of employees”, because if the company has a history of treating its people badly, employees must be hesitating. At least for(to) me, I will not choose to join it. The word “reluctant” means not very willing to do something and therefore slow to do it.
In the first sentence of Paragraph nine, “celebrating” seems not the meaning of taking part in special enjoyable activities in order to show something is important, but the meaning of appreciation. And here, it is the form of “verb-ing”. In the middle of the paragraph, a phrase “high-profile” interested me. From the reference book, I know it means easy to attract the attention of the public. In the last third line, the phrase “call for” does not mean request or ask, which [it] means “can receive, gain or deserve”. I think what Hearst does is a very good strategy which can inspire the employees to work more hard and keep a very strong willing or motivation to make benefit for the company.
