Blankbaby on the front page of the Inquirer
I can finally talk about the big news I hinted at early in the week.
If you are in the Philly area, or someplace where you can buy the Philadelphia Inquirer, I suggest you pick up today's (Sunday August 21st) issue. Why would I suggest that? Mostly because I'm on the front page.
Below the fold, sure, but on the front page nonetheless. Now, I tend not to blog about work, but you will notice the article is entitled 'Your blog may get you recruited - or terminated,' and it is all about how Blankbaby, in part, was responsible for me getting my current job (which I detail here).
How did the Inquirer find me? Well, I would like to say that Stacey Burling found Blankbaby on her own, but Karl pointed her to me (thanks, Karl!). She called me and we chatted for about 20 minutes about my blog, my job, and how they intersect. I got the feeling that she really wanted to write about people losing their jobs because of their blogs, not getting ahead, so I figured they wouldn't use my story.
Stacey emailed me the next day and asked if she could talk to my boss and if I would be willing to get my picture taken. Terry said he would talk to my 'reporter lady friend,' as he called her and I agreed to have my picture taken.
Monday night I came home to a message from the photographer. He called to confirm the time of the 'shoot' as well as ask me to wear a suit or a tie. Normally I wear Hawaiian shirts and shorts to work, so I didn't really want to get my picture taken in a photo which would imply that I wore a suit to work everyday, plus I didn't have any clean dress shirts (they're all dry clean only). I called the Jonathan back and told him that I didn't have any clean shirts and he asked, "Well, what were you planning on wearing?" to which I replied, "A Hawaiian shirt."
He said, "I guessed you might say that."
We agreed that I could wear what I wanted, Jonathan then said, "Ok, so you wear glasses and you're kinda stout, right?"
I'm not stout (I am fat, of course, but I'm also tall so stout it out as a descriptive for me), but for some reason I agreed with him and that was the end of that conversation.
The next day I went to the Inquirer building, which is a maze, and met with Jonathan and Stacey. Jonathan took a bunch of pictures of me standing in front of a wall with Blankbaby projected on it (if you want to see it check out page A15 of today's Inquirer. Tomorrow I will get a picture of it up here) and then I went home.
Stacey emailed me a few followup questions and told me that the article would be on the front page of the Business section this Sunday (most likely). As I sat here at around 1:30am I thought to myself, "I wonder if Wawa has Sunday's Inquirer and if I am in it." So I donned my shoes and walked to Wawa. Lo and behold they had the early edition of the Inquirer, so I paged to the business section where, sadly, I was no where to be found. I did buy the paper though since I had walked all the way over there to look at it. Good thing I did, since as I mentioned, my story wasn't on the front page of the Business Section at all, but rather on the front page of the paper (below the fold on the right had side), a fact I soon discovered as I sat down to read what I though was a Blankbaby-free paper.
It is late, so I will leave my reaction to the actual article for tomorrow, and hopefully by that time the article will be online so I can link to it.
