by Linda Heacox, IWPA 3rd VP-Youth Projects Chair
White Sox PR Director Katie Kirby on Life in the Boys Club
by Linda Heacox, IWPA 3rd VP-Youth Projects Chair
Katie Kirby has the distinction of being the first luncheon speaker to address
the IWPA while wearing a World Series Championship ring. Seventy five members
and guests heard Kirby's story at the May 20 meeting, which was also the annual
awards ceremony for the Mate E. Palmer Communications Contest for professionals
and the High School Journalism Contest.
The first female White Sox PR director in history, Kirby fascinated both the
professional journalists and the students in attendance with insights into the
macho world she inhabits.
Her surprise admission, that she wasn't overcome with joy during the October
2005 World Series, a period she described as "one big blur," came
as a bit of a shock to the Sox fans in the room. "October 2005 was not
a great month. None of us knew what was ahead," she said of her staff.
"It was overwhelming."
She said she knew on August 15, 2005, that the team was special. "We realized
we had to drop all our regular work and start writing copy for a program for
the World Series even though it was six weeks away and we might not be in it,"
she said.
Before the Championship Season Kirby said her office was probably averaging
about 115 million media impressions per year. "Last year, we scored over
600 million. Everything is just bigger, more intense since the championship,"
she said.
Asked for her favorite memory of the World Series win, Kirby cited the heroes'
parade through downtown Chicago.
"In any two-team town, one team always struggles for attention," she
explained. "We always struggled to get our share of attention from the
Cubs. But when we turned onto the parade route, and there were two million people
all there for the team--that was rewarding and humbling for everyone involved."
Kirby became interested in sports communications as an intern for the U.S. Olympic
Committee in Colorado Springs. In 2000, she was hired to manage the work of
the White Sox public relations agency. Six years later, she manages a staff
of four responsible for all but the "on field" media. In other words,
she is responsible for all the media that isn't directly related to the actual
game.
"Our job is to find opportunities to get the team publicity," she
said. "Often in non-traditional ways."
Kirby explained that non-traditional means arranging interviews and pitching
stories on the team to shows such as Conan O'Brien's and Oprah's. It can also
mean pitching the field as a venue for baseball-themed weddings or promoting
the annual All-Star Game, held at U.S. Cellular Field in 2003. Since the Sox
became world champs last year, Kirby says that media is easier, much easier,
to get.
After earning a B.A. from Ohio University, Kirby worked at two Denver public
relations agencies before joining the Sox. She laughed that her earliest childhood
ambition was to be a ballerina, but that when she graduated from high school,
she wasn't sure what career she wanted. Winning a journalism scholarship caused
her to focus on magazine journalism and the internship with the Olympic Committee
resulted in the shift to public relations.
In college, she said, her most memorable and relevant experiences happened outside
the classroom. She thinks such activities as internships and community involvement
helped prepare her for her current work more than academics.
Kirby told the high school students in attendance that she landed the internship
with the Olympic Committee because of her writing skill and because of her willingness
to take two terms off school to complete the internship. She modestly claimed
that winning the Sox job was a matter of "right place, right time."
The Sox own internship program favors recent grads over students since the internship
runs from January through the baseball season.
Though she's proud of being the woman who's blazing a trail into the Sox front
office, she said she believes that at the Board level, "it will always
be an old boys club. It's professional sports."
And for now, at least, that's enough. She is content, content to have the respect
of the players and to do the work she does for a team she says is very much
a family.
"In the beginning, I was like a little sister to them," she said of
the ballplayers. "Now, I'm like an older sister. I think there are only
a few younger than I am."