ENG 121 Week 10 Discussion

For this assignment, your goal is to share your position and “join the conversation” by preparing your writing for print or online publication.  Readers of commentaries want to grasp the issue you are presenting and understand your angle quickly.  You must make your point quickly and memorably, with an ultimate goal of convincing readers to agree with you and/or change their minds

In this assignment, you will continue writing about your ongoing research topic, but you will modify it to meet the various formatting and style needs of your chosen publication.  This does not mean that you can just take a 2,000-word paper and cut off 1,000 words; instead, you must demonstrate that you make careful choices to revise your more academic writing to fit another medium and for a different audience.

This assignment requires you to:

1. Choose a publication to which you will write your commentary from the specified list of options below (consult your professor if there is a different publication you have in mind that is not on the list).
2. Determine the style, tone, level of formality, etc. that is typical for that publication.
3. Analyze the target audience for the publication, and consider how their needs dictate the writing choices you will make.
4. Write a Commentary Article between 700 – 1000 words.
5. APA format – it’s likely that the publication you choose will not use APA format; however, since learning APA is a key component of this class, we will continue to use it here.  If you do decide to submit for publication, be sure to consult publication guidelines and use the reference style specified.

List of publications you may choose from:

1. Your local newspaper
2. Time Magazine (Links to an external site.)
3. NPR Opinion (Links to an external site.)
4. Huffington Post Opinion (Links to an external site.)
5. Slate Magazine (Links to an external site.)
6. The Weekly Standard (Links to an external site.)
7. Vox (Links to an external site.)
8. Teen Vogue (Links to an external site.)

**IMPORTANT: Be sure to consult the Media Bias  Download Media Bias chart introduced earlier in this class.  Each site listed above has a different placement on this chart.  Some lean left, some lean right.  It is imperative that you analyze the publication you choose and align your purpose to best meet the publication type and style, in addition to the target audience.  This requires you to spend some time analyzing the publication itself (review articles, investigate the publication’s mission, read policies and guidelines for submitting opinion pieces).  If there is a publication you would like to write toward and it is not on the list, talk with your professor about its viability.