Long before he published his first story, at age 5, Nathan Grime was tuning in to St. Louis Cardinals games on the radio after his bedtime and looking for the writeups in the paper the next day.
“I was a little kid, so my bedtime was like 8 o‘clock, so I would always turn it down really really quiet and I would sleep right next to my radio listening to the entire game,” he said. “And the next morning we would get the newspaper, and I would read the article about the game I had listened to the night before. I knew exactly what had happened in the game, but I just really liked the concept of someone putting that in the paper and asking the players and coaches stuff about the game.”
In his junior year now at Hillsdale, Grime heads the sports section of The Collegian after serving as assistant sports editor last year.
But he didn’t wait until college to start his journalism career. Growing up, he would often write game recaps for his mom.
“By the time I actually kind of learned how to write — like in middle school— I remember I still liked listening to games on the radio or watching them on TV sometimes,” he said. “I would pretend like I was a reporter and write a recap of it, and then I would show my mom and have her read it as if she was one of my readers.”
Eventually Grime started an online sports blog, where he wrote editorials about the Cardinals. Then second semester freshman year he published his first story in The Hillsdale Collegian. And most recently, he took an internship this summer covering the Lakeshore Chinooks baseball team in Wisconsin.
“It’s the very first time I’ve been able to cover a semi-professional sports team every single night, and I think it’s a pretty good simulation of what real-life sports reporting is like,” he said. “I go to games every single night, and I stay up in a press box, and I really like the routine of it.”
While he was following the Cardinals, Grime often read sportswriter Bernie Miklasz and appreciated his talented writing and good editorial instincts.
“I just really liked how he wrote. It was very blunt, straightforward, he took his job very seriously. He wasn’t a go-along-to-get-along type of guy, but he also gave praise where it was due,” he said. “When fans are reading someone’s opinion about a baseball team, they don’t want a watered-down, rose-colored version of it, and he was always good at directing criticism where it should be directed.”
As the Collegian sports editor this year, Grime said he feels well prepared after working as an assistant editor under Stevan Bennett ’18 last year.
“What’s unique about sports journalism compared to all those other kinds is that sports journalism is all those other kinds. So it’s news in the sense that you’re writing game recaps, it’s features in that you can profile the athletes and talk about their stories, it’s opinions because you can write what you think about a team, and there’s even room for investigative reporting,” he said.
In addition to sports journalism, Grime also plays club baseball and “pretty much all” the intramural sports. He is a resident assistant in Galloway Residence, takes organ and voice lessons, participates in the college and chamber choirs, and plays organ and piano for St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Hillsdale.
Although he came to Hillsdale thinking he would study politics, he decided after taking a few classes that it was more of a hobby. He is majoring in rhetoric and public address and said he would have chosen journalism if the college offered it as a major.
Grime said he appreciates how easy it is to make friends at Hillsdale, and enjoys participating in dorm events as an RA, such as the RA “Roast” he and a friend planned last year.
He said his favorite thing about Hillsdale is how easy it is to be a part of a lot of different circles.
“I do music at Hillsdale, and journalism, and I’m an RA, so it’s just been really easy to bounce back and forth between all those things and not feel like you’re in completely different crowds, because there’s a lot of different people who are very well-rounded,” he said.
After college Grime said he wants to do something similar to what he has done at his internship this past summer: “Covering a team, working for a team, going to games, writing about them, getting interviews and profiles and things like that”.