WRT333

Popular Press
Used with assignment 6

syllabus | assignment—Popular Press

Popular Press: What is Your Style?

Purpose: To think about styles of writing for particular publications and audiences, in hopes of finding a style that is “you.”

Assignment: Below are links to five articles dealing with roughly the same subject, whale songs. They were written for five distinctly different publications. Scan all five articles, and respond to the following, for class discussion:

1a) Which of the five did you like most? What was it you found most appealing?
1b) Which of the five did you like least? What makes it unappealing to you?

2) From which did you learn the most? Describe what you learned.

3) Which one of the five would you most like to have written? Why?

4) Are your current career plans consistent with the writing style you find most appealing? Would you modify career objectives if you found that your career will require you to spend most of your writing time on a style you find least appealing?


  1. Newsweek, 1970: A Whale of a Singer
  2. Science, 1980. Sound Playback Experiments with Southern Right Whales. (pdf)
  3. Science, 1971: Sounds of Humpback Whales. (pdf)
  4. National Geographic, 2007: Humpbacks. What are they doing down there?
  5. Science Daily, 2009: Love Songs Of Bowhead Whales