About this piece:
The challenge: Viral moments flatten into memes quickly, losing the human story beneath the clicks. When a Columbus, Ohio, TV reporter’s mother interrupted his live shot shouting “Hi baby!” and the clip hit hundreds of thousands of views, most coverage recycled the video without context or follow-up. The story risked being disposable internet content rather than documentation of something genuinely resonant about work, family, and the gaps between our professional personas and who we actually are.
My approach: I focused on the warm human moment: how the mother was just running an errand when she spotted the news vehicle, how the coworker secretly hit record, how the reporter went from cringing embarrassment to leaning into the moment with a hashtag. I contextualized the clip within Harris’s career (a year into his job at the ABC affiliate, working with a college friend) and captured the follow-up (Good Morning America bringing his mom on to surprise him again). The piece required finding the universal appeal (the mortification of being interrupted by your mom at work, the warmth of a parent who just wanted to check on her kid) without losing the specific personalities involved.
The impact: Published on OrlandoSentinel.com, the story gave some context to a fleeting viral moment, preserving the genuine affection and humor that made it resonate. It documented how internet fame actually unfolds for ordinary people caught in unexpected moments, and why this particular clip struck a chord when thousands of other viral videos disappear.
Originally published on OrlandoSentinel.com on February 24, 2022
Instead of Take Your Child to Work Day, a TV reporter had a Mom Drives By Your Work Day. His cringing embarrassment was caught on video and went viral.
The camera was rolling when Myles Harris, standing in front of traffic in front of a Roosters Wings location in Columbus, Ohio, saw a familiar vehicle approach.
Harris, a multimedia journalist who grew up in the city and had joined ABC News affiliate WSYX a year earlier, was mid-sentence during his report when he stopped and threw up his hands in frustration.
“That’s my mom; hold on,” he told the camera operator.
A moment later, his mother, Sandi, rolls into the frame in a black SUV with the window rolled down, leans over and shouts, “Hi baby!”
Harris’ coworker, DeAngelo Byrd — also a college friend — can be heard cackling with delight as the reporter admonishes his surprise visitor.
“I’m trying to work right now, and you’re over there calling my phone…” Harris says, then briefly introduces her to his coworker DeAngelo. “Now don’t be holding up traffic, because you’ve got cars behind you.”
“Hi DeAngelo!” Sandi shouts, apparently unruffled by her son’s annoyance, then blows a kiss as she drives away.
“When you record the best moment of 2022,” Byrd captioned the short clip when he posted it to Instagram.
Harris had also posted the video to his Instagram, where it racked up hundreds of thousands of views.
After the video went viral, Good Morning America brought Harris on to exult in his moment of internet fame. During the segment, his mom crashed the party again as the show’s producers brought her on, surprising her son.
Harris decided to lean into the moment, even creating a hashtag for social media.
He posted a photo of himself with his mother with the caption “Far from normal work day. Wouldn’t be able to do it without my best friend #hibaby”
Sandi said she had no idea her moment of motherly exuberance would turn into an internet sensation.
“I just was checking on my son. That’s all I was doing,” said Sandi, who lives about 5 minutes away and was out running an errand when she saw the news vehicle.
“And I had no idea DeAngelo was hitting the record button,” she said from a conference room of the Fox affiliate station, where Byrd filmed the trio to discuss the viral video.
She joked that Byrd was “sneaky.”
“I can’t be trusted,” Byrd said with a laugh.
Tiffini Theisen 
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