Wingerter profile of Jimmy Kennedy

Editor's note: This is the profile piece Justin Wingerter wrote for his blog. I cleaned up a couple of AP Style messes, but other than that, it's the way he wrote it for the assignment. Notice that he uses present tense ("says" instead of  "said"). That is okay for a feature story like this, but for most newspaper stories, "said" is preferred. And in this piece, like many others posted for this assignment, Wingerter would have been better off to use noun then verb when attributing quotes: "Kennedy says" instead of "says Kennedy." We'll talk about this in class today. Your grades for this assignment are posted on Blackboard.

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by Justin Wingerter

For young Jimmy Kennedy, it has always been about sports. Growing up in Millstadt, and later Columbia, Ill., meant going to Cardinals games and playing high school baseball.

Now 20, Kennedy has foregone his big league dreams in exchange for an education at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville where he majors in mass communications. Still recounting his memories as a strong-armed shortstop for the local high school, including the horror of cracking his ribs during an acrobatic play in short left, Kennedy now watches from the stands at Busch Stadium. When it isn't baseball, it's hockey as he roots for the St. Louis Blues, even proudly proclaiming he "watches them religiously on the internet."

Attendance certainly isn't a problem for this proud devotee of St. Louis sports. "I went to over 30 Cardinals games and close to 20 Blues games," says Kennedy. Ultimately though it is neither baseball or hockey that garners the most interest in this young man but rather a different sort of sport: golf.

"I played golf all through high school and won the conference golf tournament as an individual," he boasts. Multifaceted as both a fan and athlete, Jimmy Kennedy continues to dazzle both on and off the field.

Turn in separate page listing your sources

To clarify, when you turn in your writing assignments this semester (including the event preview due tomorrow), you will turn in the actual story, which should be two pages double-spaced, and also a third page that lists your human sources (the people you interviewed) along with contact info for each. I periodically contact your sources to make sure they are real people.

Story possibility

As promised, I will let you know of any notices I receive about speeches or important meetings on campus that you may want to consider covering for one of your story assignments. An Iranian speaker will be on campus tomorrow. Details below from Lucien Stone:


Please join us for the sixth event of “Cosmopolitan Iran: A Speaker and Film
Series” on Thursday, February 5, 2009. Prof. Hamid Dabashi will give a
presentation entitled, "The World Is My Home: On the Poetics of
Cosmopolitanism."

Currently Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and
Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York. He is the author of
eighteen books on a wide array of topics including Islamic philosophy and
theology, Iranian cinema, post-colonialism, and philosophy of art. Most
recently he has published: Post-Orientalism: Knowledge and Power in a Time of
Terror (Transaction Publishers, 2008); Islamic Liberation Theology: Resisting
the Empire (Routledge, 2008); Iran, A People Interrupted (New Press, 2007);
Makhmalbaf at Large: The Making of a Rebel Filmmaker (I.B. Tauris, 2007); and
Masters & Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema (Mage Publishers, 2007).

His lecture will begin at 5:00 PM in the Oak/Redbud Room (MUC).

This event is free and open to the public. Please announce to your classes and
encourage students to attend.

For more information about this speaker and the rest of the program for
the “Cosmopolitan Iran” series, please visit our website:

http://www.siue.edu/artsandsciences/philosophy/cosmopolitan_iran.shtml

Please take this opportunity to become more educated about Iran. Lovejoy
Library currently has a selection of materials about Iranian culture on
reserve, including books, films and music CDs. Also, the University Bookstore
is carrying many of the published works of our guest speakers, as well as other
selected materials about Iranian culture, which will be sold at several of our
speaking engagements and at the University Bookstore throughout the academic
year.

This series has been made possible through generous contributions made by
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s Excellence in Undergraduate
Education (EUE) program, the Department of Philosophy, and Student Housing.

Thank you,
Lucian

--
Lucian Stone
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Department of Philosophy
Campus Box 1433
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
Edwardsville, IL 62026-1433
618.650.2246
lustone@siue.edu