The Atlanta Journal

Find a article on new york times or the atlanta constitutional journal and also put the source on the bottom

Instructions //
Our third project will ask you to jump into a broad conversation about a topic of your choosing that you have read about in either The New York Times or The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, or both. Your goal is to set up a conversation (“they say”) and then contribute your point of view within that conversation (“I say”). I strongly encourage you to focus on a topic that you are genuinely interested in learning about to help ensure that the project serves your broader educational goals—and so that you produce your best writing.
Once you choose a topic and begin to understand the existing conversation about that topic, you’ll need your paper to perform one of the following broad moves:
• adds a new point of view and convincing your reader they should share it
• defends a point of view you found within that conversation
• OR shifts the terms upon which the conversation is being had—and, therefore, helps your reader see the whole debate in a new way.
You may end up performing more than one of these moves, but the important thing to take away is this: any persuasive piece of writing must be situated clearly within a conversation or debate. It’s not enough to simply have an opinion; you have to make it clear that your opinion helps move a conversation forward.
To jump into a conversation, first you’ll need to find one. You must use at least four sources—consisting of three articles you found in the NYT or AJC and at least one peer reviewed, academic source. Building from your writing in P2, your goal is to digest these sources for your reader to help them understand how they relate to the opening you see in the conversation that your writing addresses. Look for writers who respond to other writers to help you understand how the debate works. In short, working with sources is not something to tack on at the end of a project or to simply support an opinion you already have. You must understand your paper as solving a problem that you only know about by reading other writers.
Choosing a Topic //
Sometimes picking a topic to write about can feel like the most important part of a paper. Students often feel like they need to avoid choosing a “bad topic” and get stuck looking for the perfect thing to write about. While there are topics that might present unique challenges, I think most topics can work well.
The most important quality for a topic is this: there must be debate about a set of agreed upon circumstances or facts. This may seem obvious, but not being able to locate debate is often the issue when you find a topic to be challenging. For example, if you wanted to write about the best way to address a specific kind of voter fraud, but you realized that people disagree about ‘whether voter fraud even occurs in a broad enough way as to require systemic solutions, then you have a problem: how can you convince someone how to think about an issue when there is broad disagreement about whether it is an actual issue in the first place? If you tried to persuade someone to vote, for example, and you realized they didn’t believe voting even happened, you might find your task all but impossible.
When choosing a topic, look for a situation in which people agree about a set of facts but disagree about what those facts mean. CQ Researcher is a database that can be really helpful in figuring out the parts of a topic that serve as the foundation for debate. Find it and other databases at the GSU Library’s database homepage.
Working with Sources //
You will need to cite your sources using whatever style guide (MLA, APA, CMS, or CSE) is likely to be the one you will use in your specific academic area of study. If you don’t have a major yet, then think about your interests and, for the sake of this project, pick the most likely major and use the appropriate style guide.
The Purdue OWL list of disciplinary style guides offers a good place to find out what the style guide for your discipline is. You should also look at your department’s homepage, academic journals from your discipline, and any other relevant resources to help you decide which style guide would be best for you to practice using now. See the Purdue OWL for information about how to use the most popular style guides: MLA, APA, CMS, and CSE.
Important: You must include which style guide your paper uses along with your name, date, and other information at the beginning of your paper.