Introduction to #Boomerica: 109

Writing the Ship

Until a couple weeks ago, I hadn't written a single feature piece during my time with the Boomers.

Dozens of bios? Yes.

Many, many game reports? Yes.

Countless promo pieces for games? Oh yes.

But I felt like something missing from my summer portfolio, and from the Boomers team entirely, was more of a behind-the-curtain look at some of the incredible players we have on our team. So I went to my boss and told him my idea, which another intern told me he shared: We wanted to write feature stories on two of the Boomers' most popular players, partially in hopes of drawing fans out to the ballpark to see who we think will be their new favorite players.

This reminded me of something that happened in school

I noticed a stark difference between journalism majors and writing majors my sophomore year when I took a writing major class with a couple of my journalism major friends (Shoutout to Molly, and also PR major Hannah). When coming up with story ideas, I felt like writing majors just blurted out every idea they thought of and stuck to it, while this can certainly be a good thing, it left the few journalism majors in the class wondering "That's a great idea, but what's the purpose?"

Journalism majors were all about the purpose, but in this summer's situation I felt like the tables had turned.

Now it was my boss who was asking "What's the purpose" of a feature article at a minor league baseball club?

My answer: It gets fans more invested in the team, and a bigger reason to come out and watch their favorite players instead of just the team as a whole.

Two days later I was sitting in the dugout with one of my personal favorite players on the team, Gerard, talking about his life experiencecs and what brought him to Schaumburg. Three days after that, I completed one of my own favorite things I've ever written, an article that gave me the excited feeling I so rarely get while typing.

A few quick hits from the experience:

It was great to get back to feature writing; telling stories like I love to do.

The newspaper/magazine business is totally different than sports PR. When I asked my boss for a word count, he said there wasn't one. Then we found out that 500 words would be stretching it based on how much I could fit in my print medium. Cue me cutting my 900-word story down to 450.

I also got the chance to make my own graphic for this story, which will be published in the Booomers' second half program. The illustration features Gerard running around the bases in an all black-and-white photo except for his signature orange shoes, with title on the side of the frame in white, except for the bottom word, which was a matching orange.

I was extremely humbled when the other intern, who was doing a feature piece on another player, asked me to edit his first draft. The whole time I was just thinking, 'I am not worthy.'

This experience changed my writing style a bit, including giving me the desire to use more colorful words more often.

Also, as a side note, I'm starting to really 'move in' to the cubicle I always use at work. That's a fun thing.