This is going around Facebook:

To all professionals (and retirees) in the journalism, film, television, theatre, entertainment, and arts world, join the challenge to post a photo of yourself in your job. Just a picture, no description. The goal is to flood social media with our profession. Copy the text and post a pic on YOUR page.

The portrait above is from my retirement (my first of three) from The Wall Street Journal back in 2010. (I’ve also retired from the Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle.) It can either be interpreted as I always kept my cool when all hell broke loose around me. OR my work drove people crazy. (It is the first.)

I have faced disasters as a reporter/editor, including hurricanes and tornadoes in Florida. I watched a riot from my office window at the Washington Post during presidential inauguration day 2017.

I was working at the Post in D.C. during the Jan. 6, 2021, MAGAt attack on the nation’s Capitol.

And I watched another demonstration outside my office window during the APEC Summit in San Francisco in November 2023:

I’ve also been quoted in two books involving the biggest disaster of my lifetime: “September Twelfth: An American Comeback Story” and “Running Toward Danger: Stories Behind the Breaking News of 9/11.” Both involved the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

This is my profession. That’s why journalists are doing these posts on Facebook, because the profession matters.