This is the website for Prof. Annette Vee’s Fall 2014 Writing for the Public course at the University of Pittsburgh. Only students can register and comment, but visitors are welcome!
Course description
Pitt’s Writing for the Public course is designed to allow students to explore the theory and practice of writing that serves the public interest. Public writing is crucial in the nonprofit and government sector, serving every kind of cause: safety and health, political activism, the environment, policy education, animal and human rights, and the arts. Increasingly, these sectors rely on digital communication to get their messages out to the public. This section of the course focuses on writing for the public interest with digital genres.
You will have the opportunity to delve into an issue you are passionate about and compose a variety of documents to express the complexities of that issue. You can expect to report on events you attend, interview people, and identify and regularly read many sources of information about the issue you choose: professional journals, media outlets, websites, research studies, or other materials.
We will explore typography, writing style, and visual and audio design in order to create complex textual/digital documents on issues pertinent to the public interest. Along with text-centered proposals, editorials and articles, you will also create a website, write for a blog, use the social media platform Twitter and compose an audio piece suitable for podcasting. We’ll use examples of public writing, theoretical articles, and the work of students in the class to inform our discussion.
The first half of the course will focus on an introduction to the theory and practice of writing for the public in digital contexts. You will practice the writing and revision process, identify public issues, conduct research, and explore the range of genres that constitute digital writing in the nonprofit and governmental sectors. The second half of the course will be driven by your public interest project. Your final project will be a website that includes audio, visual, textual and social media elements.
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