Bitzer then studied at Southern Illinois University from 1950 to 1952 before serving two years in the United States Navy.

[8][9] Bitzer's editorship with Edwin Black in 1971 also initiated the Wingspread Conference, which expanded traditional thoughts on rhetoric into more interdisciplinary directions.

[9][10] He also wrote a book on the 1976 United States presidential debates between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, and Bitzer was president of the National Communication Association in 1976.

[4] According to Bitzer, an exigence is a situation marked by urgency and is considered rhetorical when it has the potential for positive modification and either requires or can be assisted by discourse.

"[4] According to Bitzer, constraints can include "persons, events, objects, and relations" involved in the situation because they have the power to constrain through "beliefs, attitudes, documents, facts, traditions, images, interests, motives and the like"; the two types of constraints are what Aristotle referred to as artistic and inartistic proofs.