ABSTRACT
Non-academic publication enhances teaching in ways even more subtle and profound than shaping the experiences and assumptions of teachers; it helps construct the environment in which writing programs exist. Rhetoric and composition specialists should publish in non-academic forums for two reasons. One is pedagogical, affecting both the classrooms in which the people teach and the broader classrooms in the public sphere beyond the academy. The second reason is scholarly, as there are necessary kinds of knowledge that are produced only by writing for non-expert audiences. Non-academic publication enhances teaching in ways even more subtle and profound than shaping the experiences and assumptions of teachers; it helps construct the environment in which writing programs exist. Many traditional principles of scholarly worth can be applied to non-academic publication. There are two components to the dearth of public publications by those of the reader in composition studies.
