have editorialized, criticizing… / have editorialized and criticized

Question

Other papers have editorialized, criticizing the government for its inflexibility.

This is an example of the word editorialize found in Collins English Dictionary. I would like to know if there's any difference in meaning between it and

Other papers have editorialized and criticized the government for its inflexibility.

I know they are different sentence structures but the original sentence contains a participle clause criticizing the government for its inflexibility and participle clauses are also explained as some parts of their original sentence being reduced and that includes conjunctions.

Answer 1

They would likely be understood to mean the same thing. However, the first construction implies that the "criticized" is a further explanation of the "editorialized" content, i.e., that they have been criticizing the government and therefore editorializing. The second construction implies that they have been doing two different things: editorializing and criticizing the government. In this case, the editorializing, though it is still implied that it is about the government, could have been something besides criticism.