Choose Your Own Genre (Writing for a Public Audience)
Writing for public audiences is perhaps the most challenging of the three domains we write for in
this class. It is also arguably the most flexible in terms of genre and style. Like academic and
professional audiences, public audiences expect logical claims supported by evidence. Unlike
academic and professional audiences, public audiences often have higher expectations in terms
of enjoyment and entertainment. That is, even as they are reading to educate themselves, public
audiences are less likely to continue reading if they are not also entertained or impressed by the
writing itself.
Despite the challenge of writing for public audiences, many writers find it an exciting
opportunity to be creative in framing and developing their writing to reach these critical
audiences. To that end, you have the opportunity to choose your own genre for this assignment.
Public audiences read a wide variety of genres, such as:
● long-form essays published in digital and print magazines (e.g. The Atlantic or the The
New Yorker).
● websites or blogs (e.g., Inhabitat or Bioneers )
● podcasts (e.g., This American Life or Radio Lab)
● op-eds published in digital and print newspapers (e.g., The New York Times or The
Boston Globe)
You will need to do some genre research, looking into your options for reaching a public
audience. Based on what you find—and what you notice in analyzing these genre samples—you
can then make a decision about the best way for you to approach this assignment.
Details
● The first decision you will need to make is to choose your genre—and, in tandem with
genre, your hypothetical publication venue. If, for example, you decide to write a longform essay, you will need to also decide on a specific magazine so you can emulate the
genre conventions you see in the essays published in that magazine; if you decide on a
podcast, you will need to also decide on a specific podcast you wish to emulate. It is
important to make a decision about a hypothetical publication venue in tandem with
choosing your genre because doing so gives you information about your audience, and
gives you examples to follow in your own writing process.
● Choosing your genre and publication venue are vital decisions because they impact your
whole purpose: to educate your readers about the problem, and to persuade them that it
is a problem worthy of attention. Sometimes stakeholders in a given problem are
unaware of their status as stakeholders (they might not understand how or why the
problem impacts them); your job is to frame the problem so they better understand what
is at stake for them.
● All genres are governed by genre conventions. You will need to identify some of those
conventions in samples you find in your chosen publication venue, and then emulate
them in your own work. Note: you will be required to discuss these conventions
(including your processes for identifying and emulating them) in your final for this class.
● It is difficult to specify a minimum word count for this assignment, given that you will all
be working with different genres. As a general guidelines (to be confirmed on a case by
case basis in our individual conferences), aim for the following: 1,200-1,500 word
minimum for an alphabetic text; 7-10 minutes for a video text (perhaps broken into 2-3
short videos, depending on target publication venue); 8-10 minutes for an audio text
(perhaps broken into 2-3 short clips, depending on target publication venue).
● Note: we will not be spending class time learning about multimodal composition (visual,
audio, web-based production, etc.). If you choose to compose in a non-alphabetic mode
for this project (e.g., a podcast or video), you will need to teach yourself the necessary
skills. There are many tutorials available online, including the Lynda.com tutorials which
you can access through Bridges. Multimodal projects will not be assessed based on
production value, but on rhetorical effectiveness.