#TBT from my Inquirer Experience

I dug out some of my old newspaper clips as I recently considered applying for a job or two. I also found a couple Blog Zone’s from the paper that included my old sports blog. I thought I’d share some of them on a “Throwback Thursday.”

This was my first professional work as a writer. The main story covered some of the difficulty my alma mater was facing in the early going of the football season. I got a major assist from someone—I’m guessing Joe Juliano, who wrote the Area Colleges / Small Colleges notebook before me, and was a great help to me as I was getting started—who obtained the quote in the story. Get quotes—the first of many lessons learned! I actually thought this was the only article on which “Rob Quinn” was my byline, but not so. Mom told me that I needed more to my name—even though she’s not a fan of “Robert.” I eventually added the “J.” in “Rob J. Quinn” in her honor.

I thought this was one of my best stories. It was on Jason Brader, a running back from Muhlenberg who lost both his parents in high school, yet persevered to continue his education and football career. I also like seeing the “This and That” item, which always meant there was plenty of information for the week.

Years after working for the paper, I loved when my old sports blog made it in the Inquirer’s Blog Zone. I felt like it meant I’d done something right. This was one of the longer excerpts “Rob Q. Ink” ever got in. Of course, I’m ripping the Eagles!

I should note that a bunch of Sports Information Directors from colleges and universities in the area were instrumental in making the Area Colleges / Small Colleges notebook possible. Besides Juliano, there were many people at the Inquirer who made it possible for some guy writing from home to work. One editor in particular, Bill Eichenberger (I’m guessing at the spelling), was incredible. He called me every single week while he was there to tell me what I did right, what I did wrong, and where I needed to do better.

Unfortunately, I can’t find any of my clips from the articles I did on the disability community for the Chester County section of the newspaper.









Please note: I hesitate to copy the text of the articles here due to potential copyright issues. They are all dated material anyway, and the point was to have some fun sharing the old clips, which are scanned in here as pictures. The captions give a summary of the main part of the article. The first two show the articles cut out from the newspaper. The third, which can actually be found in the philly.com archives, is a two-page printout from the philly.com version of the Blog Zone. The others are no longer available from what I found.