The Press Release (20-30 min)
Press releases are designed to get the company’s message out the way they want it to be out in news media. Therefore, there are two goals:
- 1) compose a message in a way that best reflects the company’s interests
- 2) write it in a way that makes it as easy as possible for a journalist, blogger, or whomever to more or less copy/paste chunks of your press release
Press release activity (adapted from Ridolfo and DeVoss, 2009):
Step One): Go to https://www.prnewswire.com/
Step Two): Select press release from last seven days. Event-specific or popular news item.
Step Three) Select and search for phrases (in word groups of three, preferably including one proper name) on both the web and the Google news aggregate site (www.google.com/news). Use quotation marks to perform a more honed search. So, rather than searching for a string of terms, search for an exact phrase from the original release, for instance: “three U.S. servicemen, missing from World War II, have been identified and will be returned to their families for burial with full military honors.” The quotation marks will direct the search engine to search for that particular phrase, rather than for web pages that happen to have individual words (e.g., families, burial, honors) within their content.
Step Four) If you’ve located some hits, analyze the results and compare what you have found to the original press release. In what different types of documents has the press release content been used? For what purposes? For what audiences? Are there any authors listed on the original release? On the new documents you have found? What can we learn about the compositional use of the original release?
Also:
What sentences and paragraphs are worth focusing on here between the press release and some of the articles you found? What about that selection or two seemed easily lifted from the original press release? Was it remixed in any way or was it a verbatim reprint?
Step Five) To what degree is it strategically plausible to think that experienced writers in this genre anticipate or strategize the re-composition of their work?
What other contexts in your future might you have to compose to be re-composed? Any professional writing contexts? Where does this most happen in public writing do you think?
Collaborative Writing (10-15 min)
Working Collaboratively (Plan, Plan, Plan):
- who wants to do what? (what you like + and/or what you want to grow in doing)
- who is good at what? What is each member’s strengths? How do those strengths best align to the tasks needed to be done?
- What are the time constraints? Backwards plan from deadlines to today–how much time is available for each task for each person? Compose a schedule to reflect that.
- What are some potential challenges with this work and the constraints for the work?
- Make a Team Charter, a Schedule,
- How will we organize and conduct meetings? Who will run them? Who will keep us on task? Who will record what we have to do based on what we talked about? Write agendas and take minutes?
- how will tasks be delegated?
- who is doing what? Have this in WRITING**
- How will we share information and drafts (e.g., email, Google Docs, instant messaging, text, Slack, Dropbox/Box)?
- Let’s check back in.
- Let’s check back in again.
- Okay, maybe another check in.
- What’s our progress? Do we need to adjust our plan?
Revisiting Peer Review
Since you’ve done a more controlled peer review with Unit 1 and Unit 2 projects, much like the other facets of Unit 3, much of this will be self-directed. To include peer review. Any good collaborative writing means sharing interpretations of what other people contribute to try to make the best possible version you can make. So, now that you’ll have to do that among yourselves, What makes good peer review?
- Practice: Finding the right words to be complimentary where warranted and position negative feedback in positive light.
- We spend most of our lives reading final drafts. Remember that when you read early drafts by co-workers!
- Knowing how to hear feedback: let the “whatever” response subside and try to find what is constructive, knowing how to push your peer reviewer to offer more when they are too broad or maybe just a little too positive, etc.
- Separating “you” from the writing you make. The most difficult thing, but a very useful goal.
WPC Project Work (45-60 min)
Let’s get started. Announcing teams. Staff meeting in teams first or as company? I’m a very democratic CEO, I guess (oh no! I’m both a micro-manager because of CC on all emails and indecisive!)
Web team required: sketch of website (what genre?), memo, presentation
Web team optional: what else for rhetorical goals?
**
PR required: press release, invitation to release party, agenda, presentation
PR team optional: what else for rhetorical goals?
**
Marketing required: memo, analysis (what genre?), presentation
Marketing team optional: what else for rhetorical goals?
**
Advertising required: 5 advertisements, help PR with invitation, presentation
Advertising optional: what else for rhetorical goals?
**
Accounting required: memo, budget proposal, final budget (what genre?) presentation
Accounting optional: what else for rhetorical goals?
**REMEMBER: keep documented your emails as well as CC me on any emails you send on this project to your team or to other teams.
For July 28 deliverables: do not have to submit emails, evaluation memo, or informal reflection (all those submitted with final version of deliverables on Aug 3). Send me what you want feedback on.
For presentations: We will have these on July 30. These will be 5-10 minutes long to update company on what you are doing and opportunity for feedback from other teams.
Break (10 min)
Unit 2 Check-in (5 min)
How’s it going? What’s it looking like for Friday?
Quantitative Rhetoric (45-60 min)
Quantitative Literacy
- sample size (too small, subject to high variance)
- not a representative sample (population looks very different from sample)
- unfair comparisons (e.g., batting averages of hitters and pitchers, fat content of ice cream and pretzels)
- losing context of study or figures (e.g., chocolate — study talks about associations between chocolate and weight loss, but reported on as chocolate causing weight loss…thus, study’s results are oversold unless correlation is extremely high in very large sample, there is other supporting evidence, etc.)
- Are the methods appropriate? (How’d they measure? Does it make sense?; e.g., associations between chocolate and 18 other variables in the study made it likely that there’d be an association somewhere: see this article on an experiment in media coverage of a p-hacked study)
What else?
Questions to ask:
- Ask “Who Says So?”
- How Do They Know?
- What’s Missing? (something being left out that could explain a point of emphasis?)
- Did Somebody Change the Subject? (the author tells you how to interpret the figures, and maybe the interpretation and what comes after it don’t quite match up)
- Does It Make Sense?
Potential outcomes:
- These numbers don’t look right to me, I don’t trust this author’s competence.
- I do not understand this statistic, I don’t trust my competence.
- I understand this statistic. I trust my competence and, correspondingly, the author’s.
- These numbers don’t look right to me, I don’t trust this author’s integrity.
- I do not fully understand this statistic, but I trust the author’s integrity.
- I understand the statistic, but don’t like the implication–perhaps my integrity is compromised by bias.
*Start with a combination of your gut and your ability: do I trust it or should I dig deeper?
Various Versions and Rhetorics of Quantity
Activity: What are all the other possible ways you could express “there’s a 98% chance everything is fine”?
With a partner, think of all the alternate ways you could express this statement. We’ll talk about if they “mean” the same thing, and what their effects might be.
Have at least 2 alternatives posted on this Google Doc.
Activity: With a partner or two, pull a statistic from this article on the statistics of the year for 2018. Think of at least 2 ways or more to rewrite the statistic while maintaining mathematical equality. And think of all the possible effects that these alternatives might have; list them out.
Now, try to make a visual. Keep track of your decisions. Have a title.
Questions to Discuss with Group:
Of these alternative versions of the initial statistic, which one does your group like best? Why? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each expression?
What general tips can you think of about word choice, syntax, use of visual rhetoric, mathematical expression (e.g., ratios, percentage), and contextual information based on this exercise? What sorts of things do you think are important when working with numbers rhetorically?
Graphs, Graphics, and Infographics
What qualifies as an infographic? What are its characteristics? How are they different from things like bar graphs that you can generate from Microsoft Excel or a table that you can make in a word processor?
Are there conventions as a genre you can begin to see as you compare these four infographics?
Think about these questions as you and your group look at the following infographics:
Caffeine in food and drink industry (scroll down for the larger graphic).
Acquisition strategies of tech companies
Let’s try to define some conventions for this genre and what is possible when composing an infographic. What should we keep in mind in regard to the following?:
Color?
Typography?
Arrangement?
Size?
Use of text?
Use of images?
Motion?
Where does an infographic go? For what purpose? For what kind of rhetorical situation (problem, constraints, audience)? What media can utilize it?
Why would you do an infographic and not an APA table or graph? What is the difference between an infographic and such a thing? How about a bar graph with some nice design elements: infographic or not?
Activity: Go back to the visual representation you made earlier. Would you call it an infographic? Why or why not? Go back and revise it–infographic or not–and make some changes in light of what we have talked about so far.
Review and Next Time (5 min)
-Press release: get company’s message out and write it in way that makes it easy for journalists to do a lot of copy/pasting.
-Quantitative Rhetoric: Like any symbols, there’s lots of rhetoric involved!
-Collaborative Writing: Have a plan, return to the plan, embrace giving each other feedback.
NEXT TIME: will discuss oral presentations, in-class time on Unit 2 revisions, in-class time on Unit 3 project, maybe some time to talk instructions as writing.