FINISH: Complete the “Know Your Publication” Questions we started in class for the publication YOU would like to publish in. Post your answers on OpenLab. Here’s a reminder of what the questions were:

  • What’s the publication (or platform or organization) that you would like to publish in?
  • What kinds of articles/ stories/ media  (and ads and videos for that matter) are on that site?
  • What does that tell you about who think their audience is? How do you draw that conclusion?
  • How long are the pieces usually? (pages, words, minutes)?
  • What is the tone, usually? (funny, serious, casual)
  • What kind of diction is usually used? (casual, formal, academic, etc.)
  • How do they usually use evidence/ support (such as data, quotations, interviews, etc)
  • What can you tell us about their visual presentation?  Is it all black and white text? Video with lots of graphics?
  • Do you think this would be a good publication or forum to reach your intended audience?  Why or why not?

IF YOU MISSED CLASS: You can make up for today’s in-class writing by reading one of your colleagues’ Unit 3 proposals, and commenting on them. Comments should be at least 150 words. Please do not simply say “sounds great!” because that is not helpful! Think about the kind of things that might be helpful to you as you embark on this project. Here are some ideas:

  • A specific publication or website you think the author could write for
  • A question or comment to help narrow down the audience: “You say you want young people to watch this video essay, but there’s no publication that all young people watch. Are you actually trying to reach New Yorkers?”
  • A question or comment to help narrow down the genre: “There are a lot of different kinds of articles in the world. You could be writing for a newspaper like the New York Times or a website like Buzzfeed, and the writing is totally different for both. Can you be more specific?”
  • You can also just talk about things in the proposal you find especially cool or exciting.

EXTRA CREDIT!: Everyone can receive up to one point of extra credit by providing a thoughtful comment on a second colleague’s Unit 3 proposal by 11/7.