The first step in becoming a public writer is to recognize that "public" is an extremely broad term that encompasses so many genres and platforms for your writing. Pitching an article to CNN on your latest research is not the same as publishing your short story draft on Substack, but both might fall into the broad category of “public.”
You may want to read the previous post on Academic vs. Public Writing, which discusses why we write for the public in the first place and what is politically at stake in doing so, before reading today’s post.
Today’s post will broadly consider the what, when, who, how, and where of publicly engaged writing!
What Do You Write About?
Scholars can pursue a variety of public writing genres, and the direction you take will largely depend on what you want to write about and for whom.
Some people translate their research projects into a language and length suitable for non-specialists and general readers. Let’s say you make a nuanced nutritional discovery and want to ensure that the average person has access to this information, so you translate your highly specialized journal article into digestible nuggets for the rest of us.
Others, for example, use their expertise—say, lesbian identities in the media—to write weekly in-depth analyses of specific TV shows or films, as well as a roundup of celebrity lesbian news, such as the fantastic
.Still others use their expertise to comment on recent political events through traditional media outlets, even if it is not directly related to current research. These individuals leverage their knowledge and research to provide valuable perspectives on current events that bubble up in public discourse. For example, I used my expertise in sports, branding, and consumer culture to co-write this critique of Nike’s advertising for the National Center for Institutional Diversity’s Spark Magazine.
When Do You Write?
Do you write when you have a polished research study published in an academic journal? Do you write when you are still mulling over ideas that could be published in academic journals or books? Again, there is a lot of variation here, and it all depends on your goals for public writing.
recently published a piece about academics writing on the platform. Several people use Substack as a place to work through ideas and get feedback from the online community they have built, while others use it as a primary place to publish their polished ideas.
I’ve toyed with the idea of developing a second Substack newsletter that specifically allows me to work through ideas I have for my second book because I appreciate the accountability to an audience. There are loads of other scholars on the platform sharing ideas in progress as well as more polished pieces. Some I follow are
, , and , who write about internet culture, Black feminism, and sports journalism, respectively.Who is Your Audience?
It is obvious that categorizing audiences as "academic" or "public" is an oversimplification. Just because I am an academic does not mean I can pick up the latest issue of Nature and understand 25% of what is written in it. And just because someone lacks a PhD does not preclude them from understanding Nietzsche. The truth is that we could be writing for a variety of audiences, both inside and outside the academy.
As a result, the accessibility of your work is relative, and you must determine what your target audience reads and what writing mechanics they are used to. You must also consider their level of familiarity with your topic and adjust your language and tone accordingly.
Because I write Publish Not Perish for academics from a variety of disciplines, the tone, style, and voice are all geared toward a non-specialized audience of mostly scholars (though I appreciate all of my readers from outside academia as well). I like that I am not writing for an 8th grade reading level because I can use more complex sentences, longer paragraphs, and even longer posts than I would if I were writing for a newspaper.
The reality is that publicly engaged writing reaches a wide range of audiences, and understanding them is critical to communicating with any of them.
How Do You Write?
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