Jonathan Frank, Bryan Gallion,

Karinna Hudyma, Natnael Tsegaw

University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742

October 2, 2017

Joe Davidson
The Washington Post
1301 K St.
Washington, DC 20071

RE: Research for ENGL 297

Dear Mr. Davidson:

We are a group of students at the University of Maryland, College Park, enrolled in a class called
Introduction to Professional Writing. We have been tasked with creating an ethnographic research
report by the end of the semester focused on a particular form of writing, and we hope you can provide
the necessary information for us to succeed.

Our group is composed of students with diverse majors, including economics, government and politics,
journalism, and public policy. Despite these different areas of academic focus, we all share an interest in
journalism concerning foreign and governmental affairs. Your biography is impressive and we feel you
would be a great candidate to research. Your expertise through education and the work environment will
surely provide us with the information needed to complete this assignment, and we hope it would provide
you with a chance to reflect on your writing process.

This report is based on studying how a professional writer compiles, researches, and writes in the
workplace. We will primarily focus on your work with government documents and correspondence, as
well as ask you about your experience with The Wall Street Journal as a foreign correspondent. We have a
mandated assignment schedule in which different assignments are due on specific days. The final
ethnographic report is due November 25, however this date is subject to change.

We hope you would be willing to allow some of our our group members to shadow you for an hour or so
while respecting your workspace and not interfering with your work. In our meeting, we would take field
notes and ask questions afterward. Please inform us if there is to be any violation of specific rules
regarding sharing certain information or asking certain questions. We will share the report with you for
review upon its completion and can assure you that it serves solely an educational purpose.

If you have any questions, please reach out to us at jlfrank@umd.edu or (240) 362-1400. We look forward
to hearing from you.

Sincerely,
Jonathan Frank, Bryan Gallion, Karinna Hudyma and Natnael Tsegaw