Rose, M. “Opinion: Writing for the Public.” College English Jan2010, Vol. 72 Issue 3, p284-292.

This article written by educator and composition pedagogy specialist, Mike Rose, moves to illustrate the challenges for classroom teachers in relating to their students the importance of composing well-formed opinion pieces for the public.  As a teacher for many years and a researcher/writer in the years since, Rose is an active voice for composition studies who stretches the limits of best practices and pushes for new techniques.   He candidly describes his writing life and experiences as example for approaches to opinion writing, stopping to discuss the stresses acquired in trying to write for a wider audience. He mentions that the influences of media entertainment trends on news and commentary has had a converse effect on today’s writers because it has caused a disconnect between the audience and purpose. The issue that he sees is most pressing is that rhetorical and ethical approaches are deemed the realm of academic writing and seem to be left out of public writing.

Although Mike Rose isn’t necessarily discussing travel writing or blogging, I gather from his work that such writing may be guided by demonstrations of badly constructed writing.  If there are numerous popular sites that employ the trends of entertainment media, and therefore engage their audiences for the purposes of consumerism, advertising, hype, or fantasy, then there is an ethical issue that needs to be addressed for the benefit of the audience’s impression of what this writing should accomplish.  Opinions and experiences, especially where they are meant to influence public response, need to reflect a human dignity as well as conscience to establish ethos. Perhaps Rose’s observations of the failures of composition to exemplify sound rhetoric also lends to a failure of some blogs to successfully connect audiences to a desired effect of realism.