The World of Working at Home   

It's hard to say how many journalists work at home, but it's easy to say how their work lives differ from the newsroom stereotype.

For one thing, it's awfully quiet. For full time telecommuters there's no one to badger you about meetings and deadlines. For self-employed freelancers, there's no reason to discuss your next paid vacation, your last sick leave or the company's health insurance coverage, as these things are nonexistent. In both cases, there also are no witnesses. Do all your work at 2 a.m. the night before it's due, rise late, have that second doughnut, spend the entire morning in pajamas — no one will ever know.

Some journalists love it, learning to fight isolation via e-mail, telephone and fax, not to mention chatty exchanges with the mail carrier. Others end the day with nothing to show for their newfound liberty but unpaid bills, an empty refrigerator and a blank piece of paper.

Journalist John Knowlton knows the feeling. A newsroom veteran who has labored for the Anchorage Times and other publications, he landed a fellowship in media management and entrepreneurship at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Florida, before becoming editor of the Portland, Oregon, Business Journal. Then, four years ago he succumbed to self-employment fever, converting a spare room in his Portland home into an office and launching a regional quarterly called Home-Based Business News. Circulation rose to 30,000 — the Northwest is prime home-worker territory — the magazine went bimonthly, and about a year ago Oregon Business Media snapped it up, retaining Knowlton as editor and part owner and spearheading the magazine's relaunch as a monthly called Business@Home.

The timing was right. The magazine attracted sufficient circulation and advertising to go national with a projected circulation of 100,000. Clearly, there are a lot of home workers out there anxious to find out how others of their ilk balance the personal and professional. Some 2,000 people access the Business@Home Web page ( www.gohome.com ) each day, Knowlton says, and it was no problem persuading Microsoft to air a Business-@Home story each month at its small-business Web site.

Though Business@Home has offices in downtown Portland, Knowlton still works at home part of every day, with two cats, Clyde and Shy Guy, as company.

Knowlton, 45, thinks self-employment may be good for journalists, who can use the experience to develop new "crossover skills." "The New Journalist," he says, will be a renaissance worker able to blend the writing, editing, design and online savvy necessary to compete for jobs in what he calls "The New Economy."

"Employers will want people who are essentially a one-stop shopping center for media skills, so the more media skills people can put in their toolbox, the better chances they will have for getting top-notch jobs," he explained in an e-mail interview, with Clyde balanced on his lap. "And, with the rapid technological changes we are going through, many of those jobs can be run from home."

Knowlton's magazine is not just aimed at for-hire journalists but at the broader audience of work-at-home businesspeople, whose ranks are burgeoning.

The cover story of the March issue, a "Six-Minute, 10-Tip Survival Guide," speaks directly to recent converts, many of whom have opted for self-employment because they think it will give them freedom and flexibility. Instead, the magazine warns, they risk trading in a "beehive office" for "a hamster cage at home," because the proximity of the fax and PC often become excuses to never stop working.

Better a workaholic, perhaps, than the other extreme. "Another temptation is to eat or drink too much," Knowlton says bluntly. "If you work in the Membrane Corporation and walk down the hall at 2 p.m. with a martini in your hand, someone will call on it quickly." Set up your own wet bar next to the home computer, however, and you're really on your own.

There are myths about working at home, Knowlton acknowledges. Wage-slaves think working from home is easy. It's not. It typically takes more work than going to the office. Another misperception is that you can run a business from home and be a full time parent and do all the household chores. While working from home does give you more freedom in the way you conduct your personal and professional lives, Knowlton warns that you need to be more disciplined and organized than ever.