thetorch Posted April 18, 2018 Share Posted April 18, 2018 @ThomasCrone what a great story. I also loved your article on the Lewis and Clark towers recently. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adman Posted April 19, 2018 Share Posted April 19, 2018 Thomas Crone, I echo everyone else's compliments. An outstanding read. And must also say, you spent a lot of time researching. Thanks for the time and effort you devoted. It truly shows. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasCrone Posted April 19, 2018 Author Share Posted April 19, 2018 For all those offering some, thanks for the kind words. Looks like I'll be discussing this story on 590 The Fan tomorrow at 11:30, with host Martin Kilcoyne. https://590thefan.com Thomas HenryB and NextYearBill like this Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billiken Rich Posted April 19, 2018 Share Posted April 19, 2018 12 hours ago, thetorch said: @ThomasCrone what a great story. I also loved your article on the Lewis and Clark towers recently. As a North County boy growing up, that tower and the restaurant at the top seemed a symbol of wealth beyond my family's means. Really sad to drive by it now. Again terrific story. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RiseAndGrind Posted April 19, 2018 Share Posted April 19, 2018 8 hours ago, ThomasCrone said: For all those offering some, thanks for the kind words. Looks like I'll be discussing this story on 590 The Fan tomorrow at 11:30, with host Martin Kilcoyne. https://590thefan.com Thomas I don’t know if you can/will answer this, but how did you decide to write about Tommie? Awsome you did. Just curious how a story like this goes from idea to paper. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gobillsgo Posted April 19, 2018 Share Posted April 19, 2018 @ThomasCrone Loved the article, especially all the quotes from former Bills. Very well written piece! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasCrone Posted April 19, 2018 Author Share Posted April 19, 2018 2 hours ago, RiseAndGrind said: I don’t know if you can/will answer this, but how did you decide to write about Tommie? Awsome you did. Just curious how a story like this goes from idea to paper. Hello. Let me take a stab at an answer here. When Tommie was a freshman, I wrote a story about him for St. Louis Magazine. This was in 2005 and I actually quoted from that piece in the current one, specifically the bit about Hargrave. It was probably the single, most-frustrating story I've ever worked on, and only about a third of the piece is actually mine; the rest was rewritten, including interviews I didn't conduct. In some respects, I always wanted a "do-over" on that piece and it gnawed on me for about a decade. ("Problems letting go of something?" "Yeah, maybe.") Anyway... About two years ago, I'd heard that Tommie and some friends/MC's were cutting tracks at Jupiter Studios, just around the corner from the Field House on Locust. I thought it would make for an interesting story, to talk about a former basketball star at the school now recording music just a few blocks away from his old arena. At the time, he was more-removed from the program than he is today, obviously. I was greenlit for the piece, but the few times we got together, Tommie didn't seem especially into it. He moved. There was a phone number change. FB messages went nowhere. Not completing the assigned piece landed me in my editor's doghouse for a bit (she's generally super-supportive, but I didn't deliver a finished draft, so... my bad) and I always had this sense that it was an potentially-interesting story. And, as a freelancer, these were sunk costs, in terms of time and energy, too. So, moving ahead to 2018... I'd heard that Tommie was about to take classes again. So I approached my editor and asked about a restart on the piece, which would now be a different, and likely better, article. She okayed it, with the caveat that I had to have a sit-down with him before she'd put it on the editorial calendar. Janet Oberle arranged for me to meet with Tommie at a restaurant near SLU, after he finished some paperwork on campus that afternoon. We spoke and he seemed a really different person, somehow. More engaged and seemingly down for the piece, which he hadn't been 100% into before. With that meeting in-hand, I got the okay and went to work. From that pizza meeting to the piece running, about five weeks passed. It came together pretty quickly, but I'd actually had the roots of the piece growing for years. And that's the story behind the story. Sorry to ramble, but I'm a rambler. Thomas TheDude, GBL_Bills, Gremio14 and 6 others like this Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TFord and TRavs Posted April 19, 2018 Share Posted April 19, 2018 I’ll take the hit for this but no relation to ej Liddel right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RiseAndGrind Posted April 19, 2018 Share Posted April 19, 2018 29 minutes ago, ThomasCrone said: Hello. Let me take a stab at an answer here. When Tommie was a freshman, I wrote a story about him for St. Louis Magazine. This was in 2005 and I actually quoted from that piece in the current one, specifically the bit about Hargrave. It was probably the single, most-frustrating story I've ever worked on, and only about a third of the piece is actually mine; the rest was rewritten, including interviews I didn't conduct. In some respects, I always wanted a "do-over" on that piece and it gnawed on me for about a decade. ("Problems letting go of something?" "Yeah, maybe.") Anyway... About two years ago, I'd heard that Tommie and some friends/MC's were cutting tracks at Jupiter Studios, just around the corner from the Field House on Locust. I thought it would make for an interesting story, to talk about a former basketball star at the school now recording music just a few blocks away from his old arena. At the time, he was more-removed from the program than he is today, obviously. I was greenlit for the piece, but the few times we got together, Tommie didn't seem especially into it. He moved. There was a phone number change. FB messages went nowhere. Not completing the assigned piece landed me in my editor's doghouse for a bit (she's generally super-supportive, but I didn't deliver a finished draft, so... my bad) and I always had this sense that it was an potentially-interesting story. And, as a freelancer, these were sunk costs, in terms of time and energy, too. So, moving ahead to 2018... I'd heard that Tommie was about to take classes again. So I approached my editor and asked about a restart on the piece, which would now be a different, and likely better, article. She okayed it, with the caveat that I had to have a sit-down with him before she'd put it on the editorial calendar. Janet Oberle arranged for me to meet with Tommie at a restaurant near SLU, after he finished some paperwork on campus that afternoon. We spoke and he seemed a really different person, somehow. More engaged and seemingly down for the piece, which he hadn't been 100% into before. With that meeting in-hand, I got the okay and went to work. From that pizza meeting to the piece running, about five weeks passed. It came together pretty quickly, but I'd actually had the roots of the piece growing for years. And that's the story behind the story. Sorry to ramble, but I'm a rambler. Thomas Glad I asked. Thanks for sharing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted April 19, 2018 Share Posted April 19, 2018 20 minutes ago, TFord and TRavs said: I’ll take the hit for this but no relation to ej Liddel right? they are cousins TFord and TRavs likes this Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schasz Posted April 19, 2018 Share Posted April 19, 2018 Really enjoyed reading the article on TL. So pleased to see he will finish his degree at SLU. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMM28 Posted April 19, 2018 Share Posted April 19, 2018 @ThomasCrone that is pretty impressive stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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