The local news media have long heralded Clemens as an honest politician.
Conclusion (this demonstrates)
The local media show too much deference toward public figures.
Evidence
They long heralded Clemens as an honest politician, but were proven wrong when Clemens was caught up in a corruption scandal.
And even the editor of the local paper admitted that her reporters neglected to follow leads that might have exposed the scandal earlier.
Evaluate
Whenever we do Main Conclusion (or Role) we remind ourselves that the Conclusion is usually earlier than the Support. The conclusion, on these two question types, is most often found in these two places: - First sentence - Pivot / Rebuttal idea
This argument begins with a fact, so we know the first sentence isn't the conclusion. The 3rd sentence has a rebuttal tinge to it, since we're saying that the local media have been bad.
We can also lean on the conclusion indicator wording we're getting. The obvious conclusion indicators (so, thus, therefore, hence) are usually not going to show us where the conclusion is on a Main Conclusion question (that would be too easy, unless it's a really easy problem).
But we might see more obscure conclusion indicator wording like, this shows that this demonstrates that this suggests that this reveals that
Goal
Once we've found the conclusion, we've done the hard part. Now we just have to find a meaning match for the 3rd sentence.
It is sometimes useful to limber up our language faculties by trying to think of our own equivalent paraphrase: - -