In TMHG, read "Still Hungry in America" by Marian Wright Edelman (pages 249-52) and "Our Own Warrior Princess" by Maureen Dowd (pages 255-56).Respond to at least three of the following questions (which have been extrapolated from TMHG, "Understanding a Writer's Goals: Questions to Consider and Discuss" on pages 253 and 257). Then reply to threads created by your classmates.
1. Audience: Describe the intended audience for each article? Don't just write "Readers of The Huffington Post and the New York Times," which are facts stated explicitly in the author's blurbs on the first page of each article in TMHG. Think about who reads those publications and why, and then consider who might be interested in the information provided in each article.
2. Purposes: The primary purpose of each article is to persuade, but what is it that each author is trying to persuade her readers to believe or do? What specific strategies does each author use? (Cite specific examples from the articles.) Do you think those strategies are successful for their respective audiences? (Refer to Chapter 14 in TMGH if you need to review specific strategies.)
3. Voice and Tone: In both articles, the author's voice is dominant rather than the voices of her sources, and an author's voice is most often associated with a particular tone. How would you describe the author's tone in each article? To what extent does each author's tone make her seem credible or not? (To review what is meant by voice and tone, see page 6 in TMHG.)
4. Responsibility: To what extent do the authors responsibly present the issues of hunger and organ donation? Are there any places in either article where you think the authors deliberately mislead readers or oversimplify the issues?
5. Content, format, and genre: As noted in TMHG, "Still Hungry in America" was published in the Huffington Post (an online magazine) and "Our Own Warrior Princess" was a column published in the New York Times newspaper. Even though Edelman's article is considerably longer than Dowd's, both are relatively short compared to articles in academic journals, because most readers prefer shorter pieces in popular newspapers and magazines. How might the shorter length of each article constrain and/or benefit each author?