As public relations professions advance toward new media platforms, one traditional tool--the backgrounder/position paper (more technically termed white paper) remains a compelling vehicle to impart enduring professional competencies. Moreover, the skills requisite to produce a white paper can be deployed in a variety of new and traditional media…

This article presents a public speaking assignment that takes the study of rhetoric seriously. First, it shifts the approach from the common typology of informative, persuasive, and ceremonial speeches toward forensic, deliberative, and epideictic rhetoric. Second, this assignment takes rhetoric seriously by generating the understanding that all…