his age of 24-hour cable news channels, tabloid news shows, and aggressive local and national news reporters intent on exposing corporate wrongdoing, one of the most important skills for a manager to learn is how to deal effectively with the press. Test your ability to deal effectively with the press by putting yourself in the following situation. To make the situation more realistic read the scenario and then give yourself two minutes to write a response to each question.81 Activity Today, in the nation’s capital, a public-interest group held a press conference to release the results of a study that found that the food sold in most Chinese restaurants is high in fat. The group claims that the most popular Chinese dishes, including orange chicken, pork fried rice, and Hunan beef, contain nearly as much fat as the food you get from fast-food chains like McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King. (Much of it is fried or is covered with heavy sauces.) Furthermore, the group says that customers who hope to keep their cholesterol and blood pressure low by eating Chinese food are just fooling themselves. A TV reporter from Channel 5 called you at Szechuan Palace, your Szechuan-style Chinese restaurant, to get your response to this study. When he and the camera crew arrived, he asked you the following Questions: 1. “A new study released today claims that food sold in Chinese restaurants is on average nearly as fattening as that sold at fast-food restaurants. How healthy is the food that you serve at Szechuan?” 2. “Get the camera in close here [camera closes in to get the shot] because I want the audience at home to see that you don’t provide any information on your menu about calories, calories from fat, or cholesterol. Without this information [camera pulls back to get a picture of you and the reporter], how can your customers know whether the food that you serve is healthy for them?” 3. “These new studies were based on lunches and dinners sampled from Chinese restaurants across the nation. A local company, Huntington Labs, has agreed to test foods from local restaurants so that we can provide accurate information to our viewers. Would you agree to let us sample the main dishes in your restaurant to test the level of calories, calories from fat, and cholesterol? Furthermore, can we take the cameras into your restaurant so that we can get your customers’ reactions to these studies?”

Length: 1000 words (± 10{0e601fc7fe3603dc36f9ca2f49ef4cd268b5950ef1bbcf1f795cc00e94cdd119}). Your bibliography is not part of your final word count.
Minimum Sources: 6 (readings do not count as sources)
Content
Pick a policy issue and explain why that is a public policy problem. Explain the possible opposition to your problem definition. Explain why we should spend taxpayer money and dedicate time and energy to solve this public policy problem.
Dos

Define your problem narrowly. Do not pick an issue that is overly broad such as “health care is a problem in the US”. Narrow the problem to a manageable subset such as “access to affordable health care for young (18-24) people is a problem.”
Use precise language. Avoid ambiguous terms. Be straightforward in your statements.
Use evidence to back your claims. Do not take it for granted that everyone would agree about your take on the issue. Evidence should include academic research and data.
Present your data effectively. Use charts, graphs, tables to present the evidence you have collected. Always report the source of your data.
Structure your document. Make sure that it follows a logical progression. A quick two-line description of its contents can be very useful.
Address the best possible opposition to your problem definition.

Don’ts

Do not bake the solution into your problem definition. Example: if you say that “we do not spend enough money for k-12 education”, then the obvious solution is “increase spending”.
Do not obfuscate the issue. Example: if you define a problem in terms of fairness, you must explain what you mean by ‘fairness’. Your definition of hard-to-measure concepts could be very different from your audience’s.
Do not make evidence-free assertions.
Do not use unreliable sources: trace the evidence back to the primary source.

Format
Text: you are free to choose your font, spacing and other features of formatting. Your only constraint is a one-inch margin minimum throughout your document.
Bibliography: you are free to choose whichever bibliographic format you prefer (APA, MLA, etc.) as long as you include all the relevant information. That includes author, year, title, source, web link (when applicable). A link list is NOT an acceptable bibliography.