Business Profile in the Burlington Times News

Context

In fall 2020, I completed the Writing for Civic Action course required within my major. This course was structured around three units, each concluding with an independent or group-based project. My personal favorite was the Downtown Burlington Business project, where each student was paired with a small business from Burlington, NC. My partner, Chloe, and I worked with Owl and Rabbit Gallery, an art gallery that sold metal garden art and whimsical trinkets crafted from local artists. We were able to interview the owners, a husband and wife, and tour the gallery. My professor asked us to compose a multimodal document that would tell the story of the business--in any manner we deemed appropriate. Our final deliverable, a Microsoft Sway, allowed for the combination of text and images to show how the business owners stayed resilient during the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. We took our work a step further by submitting it to the Burlington Times News, a local newspaper in town for potential publication. The deliverable included in my portfolio is the publication from December 7, 2020. The target audience was members of the community who may not know the story behind Owl and Rabbit Gallery, or the owners’ plans to revitalize downtown Burlington with new properties in the works. 

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Rhetorical Strategies

This article was grounded in emotional appeals towards my audience. More specifically, Chloe and I intended to capture the struggle (and determination, as a result) of these Burlington business owners in a time of global unpredictability. The first titled section of the article, “Resilience Through COVID-19” explained how the Lewis’ opened a drive-thru outside their store to still stay open during the pandemic. They even used the front of their other business, a metalworks company, to produce face shields for local hospitals. We hoped these details would again highlight the Lewis’ resilience, but further show their dedication to the Burlington community. The final two sections, “Expansion + Revitalization” and “Looking Ahead” addressed the Lewis’ commitment to molding downtown Burlington into a stronger consumer-oriented place. We intended audiences to feel inspired by the Lewis’ efforts, much so they would support their own businesses and the others in downtown Burlington. Overall, this article intended to reflect the need–and attempts–towards community revitalization in a time where such ambitions could be thwarted. Invoking feelings of community pride and inclination of future support was the heart of our words.

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Reflection

I’m very proud to have published an article during my undergraduate career. I often reflect on the overall experience and how it prepared me for work I’ve completed during my internships and employment opportunities. I gained practice in collaborative work, conducting interviews, and capturing media content relative to my written content. More importantly, I developed an understanding and appreciation for entrepreneurship and the surrounding community. If I were to revisit this article, I would consider inserting more titled sections to break up the text and indicate separate topics. They were included within the original Microsoft Sway document composed for the course, but they happened to be removed in the publication process without our knowledge. Nevertheless, these additions would allow my writing to better conform to an editorial genre, while enhancing audience reliability and engagement with presented ideas.