Front Page News

It's a bit hard to tell from the above image, but this week, Hannah and I graced the front page of the Boston Globe. Here's a close up of the image:

And here's the portion of the article I was actually quoted in:

And here's the bostonglobe.com image:

The link to the full article and the related video, starring me.

Still here after all that? Because let's be honest, this could make for a longer lasting momento of my fleeting fame than the actual piece of paper will.

So during a rather boring episode of The Bachelor, the Globe reporter who wrote the article had sent out a tweet asking if any parents who work from home wanted to talk about it for an article. I sent back this post about my work at home Tuesdays and the following morning she reached out to interview me, in light of all of the Yahoo kerfuffle about employees no longer being permitted to work from home. A few hours later, the photographer came by to get some (fairly staged) pictures and video, and then boom, front page news the following day. It all happened so quickly, and I was nervous about how it would go, but I'm very happy with the turnout. Thankfully, my employer was very excited about the whole thing, actually sending it out to the whole firm to see.

Of course, I was hoping the article would say more than it did. I believe that for many employees, being in the office for some portion of their employment is critical. I'm only home that one day a week. For the majority of that time, I'm home alone. I usually end up putting in a longer day when I'm at home, since I don't have the commute to deal with. I thought the Yahoo memo, as circulated by the press, was a bit blunt. However, things at Yahoo might be very dire - and if they need all hands on deck to saving a sinking ship, better that no one works from home than all of them lose their jobs when the company shuts down. But hopefully managers and individual employees who truly depend on working from home were able to work something out, since I'm pretty sure no one other than the CEO is able to build a nursery at the office.

It's kind of funny how people think being in the newspaper is still really cool. The photo of my front page article garnered what may have been my most Facebook likes ever, and I'm not sure how I'll begin to top that. I don't even think everyone who clicked like agrees with the content of the article - just with the coolness factor of being in print. That's saying something, journalism majors of America. Don't give up on the reading public. Or, maybe just feature real people on the cover more often.

Thanks to all who reached out - I appreciate every one of your "you're famous!" and "can I get your autograph?" comments. It was a really fun experience, and I hope to have more opportunities like this in the future.