Ethics and Public Policy

MAR 6930, Section 7571

Fall 2010, Module 2

Thought Paper #1

Due at the start of class, Wednesday, November 3

Public policy and marketing interventions to improve people’s liveshave become an increasingly popular topic in the mainstream media. Brief reports on recent research and innovations can often be found in the science and business sections of newspapers, magazines, and blogs. Because these reports will likely be your most common source for information on new interventions once this course is over, I wanted to get you thinking critically about what these types of stories can and cannot convey about this work.

For this thought paper, I would like you to choose a popular press article on an intervention designed to help people make better choices. This should be a factual article, rather than an opinion-based one, and should be of moderate length, so you’ll have some content to think about and discuss. Good sources for such articles include the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Slate, or the Harvard Business Review, but don’t feel confined to only those sources.

I will leave the exact format and content of your discussion up to you, although you should aim for it to be between 2 and 3 double-spaced pages long. However, here are some questions that you may find fruitful or interesting to address:

  • Did the article provide a balanced or realistic view of the intervention?
  • Did the article overstate (or understate) the potential benefits to the intervention?
  • Are there any foreseeable barriers to adoption that the article fails to address?
  • Are there any obvious alternative interventions that the article fails to address?
  • Are there extensions to the intervention that could be applied to other issues or causes?
  • More basically, if this were the only information you had about the intervention, would you truly understand what it was about?

I will be grading largely on the depth, thoughtfulness, and clarity of your discussion. Please include a copy or link to your chosen article with your assignment. Good luck!

Extra credit (3 points):

Find a blog post about an intervention (preferably a blog that is unaffiliated with a professional news organization). Analyze it in a paragraph or two. Among the questions you might consider: Do you think the blog presented the intervention accurately? Why or why not? How might the description of the intervention have differed if it were in a more “official” news source? Did it make you more or less enthusiastic about the intervention than the newspaper/magazine article you read did? Feel free to discuss other aspects of the post as well. Please include a link to the blog post you analyze.