<span>(C) is the most correct answer. With new journalism, there are many more people who hold the title of "journalist" in the current climate. This makes for a great deal more competition in the race to get a scoop out to the public. Finding the hot new story and being the first to report it is becoming tougher than ever.</span>
The last one is the correct answer.
The purpose of the use of elongated hyphens in this excerpt is C. To interrupt the pattern of speaking in the normal flow of ideas.
Elongated hyphens are used to emphasize something, add extra information and even as a substitute for commas in some cases.
The other options are not correct because they don't cover the main function of the elongated hyphens which is to disrupt a sentence with extra information added to it.
