Writing 310 Blog Post 2

Purpose statement: This blog post will discuss the issue of lack of access to COVID tests in the city of Newberg in order to show my professor that I'm brainstorming for my final project, a white paper that will attempt to help with a problem in the Newberg community.

I'm going to preface this by saying that I probably spent an hour scrolling through Newberg Facebook groups and essentially only saw arguments about the recall election. All that aside, however, I eventually settled on another issue: lack of COVID tests.

George Fox University announced in an email sent on 11 January that they would only test people with COVID symptoms, a change in their policy from the previous semester. About a week later, on 19 January, they updated this to a policy of only testing "people with moderate/severe illness or people with high risk for complications." This time, they clarified that this guidance came from Yamhill County and the Oregon Health Authority, due to a shortage of tests that spans far beyond Newberg.

This issue is in part caused by the Omicron variant's ability to evade the protection of vaccines. On a local level, it's clear that, though unvaccinated people still make up a disproportionate number of cases, their share has shrunk as the pandemic has entered the new wave. 

This issue will hopefully be resolved by a drop in cases as the omicron spike passes, but the WHO has warned that omicron will not be the last variant of concern.

Though Newberg can't do much to solve this national issue, one piece of the puzzle is prioritization of tests. George Fox provides an interesting example of this: the university has stuck with in-person classes, and though its COVID protocols are not exactly exemplary, I have personally had two teachers have to miss class because of confirmed or suspected COVID. The first was able to get a test, but the second—whose illness came on after the most recent guidance on testing—couldn't, despite being sick. 

As always in the pandemic, we're balancing between safety and normalcy. However, if the goal is to keep as much safe normalcy as possible, it seems that this professor should have been able to get a test, as their absence due to illness left their students missing class, but the plan seems to be to come back as soon as possible rather than wait for them to quarantine. This kind of situation shows that there are possible exceptions to the rules around COVID testing, as some people's inability to test affects a greater number of other people. Though this example is specific to George Fox, I'm sure examples of this exist in the community at large. 

COVID testing—and knowing whether you've been exposed to someone who was infected—is vital if we want to even try to contain the pandemic. And though it is of course most important to know how to treat those who are harder hit by illness, other factors should affect test prioritization.

Writing 310 Blog Post 1

This is an assignment for the Professional Writing class I'm taking. The description was: "Find an email, a social media post, or a portion of a document you have written within the last few months that you would be willing to share on your blog. Post the email or portion of a longer piece on your blog, scrubbing it of any identifying features. Next, analyze YOUR posted document by looking at the document’s purpose, audience, stakeholders, and context."

For this assignment, I chose an email that I sent for my job at the Crescent last semester:

Hello!

My name is Aidan and I’m a reporter for the Crescent. I’m emailing you on the recommendation of (other source) about (an article about an event taking place) this weekend. 

Since you (have a central role in the story,) I think people would love to hear some of your thoughts on (the story.) 

Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be able to do an in-person interview because my schedule is pretty packed this week. However, I’d appreciate it if you’d be willing to share your thoughts via email.

Let me know if you’re interested and I’ll send some questions along. I look forward to hearing from you!

Sincerely,

Aidan Arthur

In this email, my purpose was to obtain an interview via further emails, and eventually to publish an article in the student paper. I succeeded in this, via a lengthy response to eight follow-up questions. This, along with other reporting, helped me finish my article. 

The audience in this document was a source closely involved in the story I was reporting who became a main voice in the article. The source's contact information was given to me by another person, as I mention in the email. Understanding the audience is usually an important consideration in professional writing, but in this case context was more important, as I explain below—partly because I didn't know this person. Understanding the context in which this communication was received gave me a minimal understanding of the source at the moment at which they got it, though not as a whole.

The stakeholders included me (as my job depends on meeting deadlines and putting out stories,) the student paper (as the editors were interested in publishing this story,) and (tenuously) the public who may have been interested in the story. Assuming that the source was actively interested in being featured, as their lengthy response seems to indicate, they may also have been a stakeholder.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of this email is the context. I couldn't have known where my source would be reading the email, but some other elements of the context were important in crafting this email. Firstly, I knew that the source would be opening an email from an unknown address, which is why I led with an explanation of my job and how I got his email address. Secondly, due to the nature of this story I knew that the source would likely be busy that week—as was I—which was a contributing factor to the brevity of the email as well as my explanation that an email interview would be more convenient. Similarly, I didn't include questions in the primary email, because I thought it might come off as overwhelming or overbearing. Instead, I proposed a secondary email in my last paragraph.