Blog Seven: Editorial Assignment

Good morning, everyone! I just sent out all of this week's assignment information via Black Board. Here is your seventh blog assignment. I have been impressed with many of your blogs and web sites. Keep up the good work!

Best,
Courtney

Blog Assignment 7: Editorial For this blog assignment, we would like you to write and post an editorial on an issue that seems timely and important, and about which you can present an effective case that will move people to share a particular point of view on this topic. That is, your goal will be to engage an issue, problem, situation, event, or trend that you feel is significant and worth addressing, and to talk about the issue in a way that will appeal to a wider public audience and persuade them to take a particular stance.
You may choose any issue you wish to write about, keeping in mind that in order to write effectively, you will need to think very carefully about four things:
Timing/timeliness; that is, you will want pick a topic that is current, relevant, or interesting to a group of people besides just yourself, and you will need to discuss this topic in ways that engage a real set of readers to want to take some action on the issue;
Situation/context; while it is perfectly acceptable to pick a local topic or issue, you will want to spend some time thinking carefully about where such an editorial might actually appear, and how this context might affect other choices you make as a writer;
Audience; who are you writing to, and how can you discuss this issue or topic in ways that will engage the widest number of people, even those who might not be inclined to think this topic important initially;
Intention; what you hope to accomplish in writing this letter, keeping in mind that you might want different readers to have different reactions to different aspects of your discussion.
Your editorial itself should be between 300 and 500 words long, and should be targeted toward a specific publication or website (with the name of the publication or URL of the website included in your post). To demonstrate that you’ve considered each of the four aspects above, we would like you to submit a 250 word description of your rhetorical situation (your thoughts on the above points) after your editorial.
Remember, your editorial is meant to be persuasive, meaning that you should seek to reinforce, reverse and/or shape a set of ideas and beliefs about this topic. We will also want to see that you engage each of the guidelines for persuasion we’ve been talking about the last few weeks, as well as some of the moves of proposals you've been studying throughout the semester.