Assignment Three

Short Paper Assignment: Due November 2, 2004 12:40PM.

Genres

You've been hired by a newspaper that wants to create an online version (yeah, they're slow). They have a sense that there are important differences between print newspapers and their online cousins, but at this point this is merely a vague intuition on their part.

Your task is to compare and contrast the genres of paper newspapers and online papers. To do this you need to review at least two papers that have both online and print versions. These should be major, ordinary newspapers. One should be the San Francisco Chronicle and its online version, sfgate.com. For the other, you can pick a paper you are familiar with. The New York Times (and nytimes.com) is one possibility.

Your employer doesn't know about genre theory, but you know (because you excelled in IS203) that genre theory will give you a way to understand each of these as a genre, to
compare and contrast them, and to consider their future evolution. Use the readings on genres to structure your investigation.

Remember that your discussion is not about these specific papers/sites that you are examining but about the genres of which these are instances.

Your colleagues look forward to reading your memo, which of course will fulfill all of the standard genre requirements for memos; your boss looks forward to reading the executive summary reporting on your conclusions and logic. And since your colleagues are all professional writers, they'll be expecting clear and concise writing from you.

In addition, you'll be briefing the venture capitalists, so add three powerpoint slides that capture the essence of your argument and will motivate the VCs to fund you.

Four pages double spaced text, not counting powerpoint slides, illustrations, footnotes, appendices. Be sure to use basic concepts and "terms of art" from the readings accurately - your colleagues may not recognize them, but we will.