Composition in a New Genre

Taking a piece of writing and composing it for a new genre is a critical skill for

any writer to have. The purpose is to shape the writing to better fit this new genre and

new audience that comes along with it. A good example of this would be Jon Krakauer

and his book “Into the Wild.” Krakauer was originally a journalist for Outside magazine,

wrote an article about a kid Chris McCandless who cut ties with his life and ran away to

live in the remote wilderness of Alaska. After writing this article he became fascinated

with the story and began collecting more and more information and eventually

transformed this article into a novel. Not just any novel I might add on of the best selling

of all time. So there lies the importance of composing in a new genre, you can take any

piece of your writing and transform it into a completely new genre and outlet. The

purpose of my endeavor will be to take the research project I have been working on all

quarter and make it usable for publication in the student newspaper the Clarion.

Next it’ll be key to make this attract to the same audience but yet still appealing to

the new discourse community I’m attempting to appeal to. The main change I will have

to make within the paper is change the focus more towards DU itself. The Clarion is a

very school focused paper and anything in the opinions section has to directly relate to

DU students and facility. The writing will also have to be shortened and more focused

because of the new genre that it is being placed in. No one wants to read a ten page

newspaper article, not even in the New York Times, so the points will have to become

more direct for the reader. At the same time though the content and message will have to

remain the same in the shortened version so it doesn’t lose it core purpose.

The new genre outfit for my research assignment will be the well-established

Clarion the official newspaper of DU. As a published writer of the newspaper I have a

very good sense of what will need to be transformed in the current piece. Conventions of

this new genre I’m entering will be quite a few things. This piece is will fall into the

opinions section of the paper which means I will need to add much more personal voice

in with the findings. With lines such as “The drinking age is a tired old law in the use and

needs to be lowered.” Establishing a strong voice in this section of the paper is the

success to really drawing in the reader who will either agree or make their own opinion

based on the views you express. Also the word count will have to be drastically reduced

to about 450-500 words opposed to the 3,000 plus it currently is. This part can be tricky

and particularly difficult because many important points and discoveries I’ve made will

have to be left out. I experienced this once already as I transformed a paper written in

WRIT 1122 about the death of the manual transmission into a Clarion article. The

sliming process was difficult mainly because you have to make every sentence count as

much as possible no words can be wasted space on the page. I think the Clarion is a

perfect outlet for my research project because the focus of it is drinking on college

campuses and all my primary research is done at DU. This means the article can really

resonate with the student and hopefully facility that read it because it is directly about the

culture of this campus. Also drinking on this campus and the troubles many students have

with the school is a critical issue across the school. Many feel Campus Police and Student

Life have unfairly treated them for drinking underage. A practice so common in America

as I’ve shown in my research that it feels very unjust that only a few are singled out. So

Hopefully this article can really attract the attention of the student body.

One piece I really wish to highlight from my research is the article, “AN

EXAMINATION OF UNDERAGE DRINKING IN A SAMPLE OF PRIVATE

UNIVERSITY STUDENTS”. This article took a look specifically at small private

universities like DU and studied how drinking effected its student population. It found

that at smaller schools like DU students did a much job of balancing drinking and school

then those students at larger schools like CU Boulder. This is great for my argument in

the article for letting students drink because most can handle the balance. The next article

I want to highlight from the research I’ve already done is “Underage drinking and the

drinking age” by C. T. Main. In this article she really breaks down the flaws of our

current system under the current drinking laws. She looks at how it is actually causing

more problems than good influencing binge drinking and getting good smart kids into

trouble with the law. It’s clearly a very broken system in her eyes and she cites people

like the Dean of Middlebury College in Vermont, John McCardell Jr., wrote a piece in

the New York Times highlighting the stupidity and backwards nature of our current

drinking laws.

One of the new sources I’d like to cite is Dean McCardell’s New York Times

article itself. He talks extensively about his experiences with college students and seeing

some get in trouble for no other reason than for the fact that they had drank a little that

night. He cites how backwards and outdated the current laws are with the rest of the

world and how more harm than good is actually coming of it. He also recognizes that no

matter what college students are going to drink no matter what laws you put in place so

you might as well make it legal for them.

The last thing I would like to cite in the article is information about our own

current Chancellor Rebecca Chopp. She actually signed petition along with 130 college

presidents in 2008 in support of lowering the drinking age. If our own Chancellor

supports this idea shouldn’t it be allowed? Great food for thought amongst the other

information in the article.

Reference:

Main, C. T. (2009). Underage drinking and the drinking age. Policy Review, (155), 33-46.

Retrieved from http://0-

search.proquest.com.bianca.penlib.du.edu/docview/216455758?accountid=14608

Coll, J. E., Draves, P. R., & Major, M. E. (2008). AN EXAMINATION OF UNDERAGE DRINKING

IN A SAMPLE OF PRIVATE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS. College Student Journal, 42(4), 982-985.

Retrieved from http://0-

search.proquest.com.bianca.penlib.du.edu/docview/236588640?accountid=14608

McCardell, J. M., Jr. (2012, June 23). Let Them Drink at 18, With a Learner’s Permit

[Editorial]. New York Times. Retrieved from

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/05/28/do-we-need-to-redefine-adulthood/let-

them-drink-at-18-with-a-learners-permit

College Presidents Debate Drinking Age. (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=5612870