The New York Times, apparently, has recently discovered that some people blog as a career. Even worse, the stress of blogging is killing us: they adduce as evidence the recent (and tragic) deaths of Russell Shaw and Marc Orchant, and closer to home for us, Om Malik’s heart attack. Reading the article in the Times, you’d think that tech blogging in particular is one of the most dangerous things you could pick for an occupation…
Perhaps the Times should have consulted…some lower-stress bloggers before publishing their story. But then, how would they keep their page views up? I’m looking forward to the day when the major media starts publishing balanced stories about blogging and other forms of web work, instead of continually treating us as a freak show. Of course, as Marc Andreessen reminds us, future headlines could be worse.
I think some of our readers are more stressed by our blogging – than we are.
Since this blog is nearly devoid of original content outside of the corresponding comment threads by others about the cut and pasted “news” excerpts, I’m not sure why you guys would be stressed either. I actually find it very entertainment having a forum to be a total blow hard anonymously with others who are just as full of shit as I am.
A non-existent Times reporter summarized the article this way “Don’t blog it will KILL you. (Your blogging is killing us.) Let us provide the shoddy news and half baked ideas. Please do something else that doesn’t effect us.”
I can see death by blogging meaning that people who don’t know shit about peanuts blog their little hearts churning up so much hate-spew that it’s even harder to find the real truth, and therefore we die as a result of mis-education. Just because everyone has a right to say what’s on their minds doesn’t mean everyone should speak up.
And yes this has been a personal thought conjured up by me
This is like the movie Romancing The Stone, where Michael Douglas’s character picks up the outdated Rolling Stone Magazine and says “What, the Doobies broke up…man I have been out here too long.”
I noticed that Om was not on Cranky geeks…but didn’t know he had a heat attack. Aye Carumba! I have to start reading other blogs than this one!
Does this mean that if I post here I will have a heart attack and d
Cripes!
We should all stop working because it’s stressful.
That’s like cows saying eat more chicken.
I’m shocked, I thought Om was training for the NY marathon. So blogging means staying indoors and eating fatty foods with no exercise. How could that be bad?
Blogging is unfortunately a bit of a catch-all term, not to mention a stupid-sounding word.
Hopefully in time, the lines between ‘website’, ‘publication’ and ‘blog’ will blur sufficiently to erase the term from common use.
One of those guys was sixty years old. I got a news flash for you, the heart attack was not due to blogging.
Hmm, I think I better go lie down now. I wonder why my arm has gone numb?
http://tinyurl.com/53y8ql
I guess they haven’t gotten around to declaring Blogs as “anti-american” or “terrorism” or “responsible for global warming” or “just plain not christian”. So far it only kills you, as if nothing else does. What happen NYT? Did smoking stop being number one on the list of bad things that kill people every year?
Figure that?
A NY Times JOURNALIST (implying he had to go the old fart route of going to gasl College for a degree in Liberal Arts or Journalism) saying that blogging might not be good for bloggers????
Why that is a page straight out of the mafia’s book of, you know that things get broken in your shop… you need insurance!
Good work NYT. I mean we wouldn’t want their ISP to suddenly stop working now would we?
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