Neigborhood House and Cruisin

Over the last couple of weeks with Out-and-About Magazine, I have been getting the opportunity to write extended pieces. I was nervous at first to start writing these, but I got to work and ended up having a blast writing them. My first piece was for Cruisin' Magazine, a sister magazine to Out-and-About. I had to write about Jim Mezz, the owner of Atlantic Speed. Atlantic Speed is a speed shop store. I spent about three hours at Mezz's place and learned a lot. I don't know too much about cars, but Mezz had a great time explaining everything to me. I ended up writing a feature piece about Jim and his shop. He has even worked with famous racers, which was really cool. The story ended up being about 800 words, so of course, a nice clip to add to the file.

The following week I worked on a feature piece about the West End Neighborhood House in Wilmington. This place is a social service agency. The business celebrates 125 years this year. So, that's a really neat fact. Everyone who I interviewed for this story was really nice and helpful. They gave me more than enough information for the piece. This story ended up being about 600 words. Mike gave me some helpful hints about this story. He gave me tips on how to tighten my writing. I have learned that this is my biggest weakness. But, that's why I'm taking an internship, so I can improve and get better.

More advances and such

Last week, I was able to work on more advances for the Out-and-About Magazine. The most exciting part of last week however, was getting to see my advances that I wrote for the February edition. The new magazine came out on Thursday and I got to see what I was able to write. It was a really satisfying feeling to see my actual work in print. This was my first work that I've ever had in a magazine, so it was relly neat. Most of the work I have had published has been in newspapers. Mike wanted me to take a moment and go through the magazine and read the finished products and he wanted me to see how everything ended up coming out. I looked at the layout of the magazine and came up with a few questions regarding the final product. Mike wanted the other interns and I to come up with questions so that we could talk to him about it. Toward the end of the week, I sat down with Mike and he went over and discussed why certain decisions were made about how to publish specific stories. I found the meeting informative because I learned more about how a magazine staff operates.

On Friday, I did not go into work because I went up to Philadelphia and attended the Philadelphia Phillies College Media Day. This was extremely informative and the best part of the day was getting to hear from Jayson Stark, a writer with ESPN. It was a motivational day because I got to hear from successful people who talked about how they got started. I found it interesting that a lot of the writers started out just like me--nervous and unsure about what exactly they wanted to do. And P.S., the Phillies are my favorite team, so it was awesome just being in Citizens Bank Park.