I’m not sure the last time I saw a New York Times piece that failed to convince, well, anybody. It may be because Matt Richtel made the classic mistake of developing a thesis and sticking to it until he found some evidence. (Academic tip: A good thesis comes after research.)
Matt Richtel
New York Times
Richtel’s thesis that the blogosphere (or the home office) constitutes “the digital-era sweatshop,” wherein cardiac arrest seems as eventual as black lung, proved an attention-getting one. The post, entitled In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop, was the number one most blogged NYT story over the weekend.
It trumped—by six places—Thom Shanker’s piece about how the US Army is concerned about the stress soldiers face as a result of multiple Iraqi tours. You can blame Shanker for the poor showing. He failed to mention bloggers at all.
And if you work for the most prominent news source in the world, that’s missing out on a golden linkbait ticket. Really? Not one mention about the stress bloggers are under and how it compares to post traumatic they-were-shooting-at-us stress disorder? Don’t you guys collaborate on these things via—oh, what are they called?—editorial meetings?
Richtel evidences the deaths of Russell Shaw and Marc Orchant, both recently felled by (quite obviously) blogging-related heart attacks, and Om Malik, a decade or two the junior of both, whose December coronary was directly causal of his need for a change in latitude. Others (the survivors) complain of weight gain and not sleeping well.
Gawker’s pay-per-page-view model has conscripted bloggers into an army of insomniacs, often posting until the great by-and-by of sleep imposes itself upon them and they lurch forward at their desks. Think of the poor souls at Valleywag, forced into the digital sex trade because nobody reads their posts without a little nookie mentioned; How can one possibly subsist in the Valley on a diet of unfounded rumors and no va-va-voom?
Some bloggers are paid as little as $10 per post. (I can do you one better. I’ve seen offers as little as $3 per post, as little as “for the fun of it.” Ooh, where do I sign up?) Is that even enough to supply your protein supplement and coffee regimen?
Somebody get Congress on the line.
Or not. The blogosphere can be swifter in these matters. The lines are long at the blog search engines, where bloggers have weighed in with what should have been the obvious. Mainly, to sum up many, they had these objections:
1. Those Indian kids you see on TV cooking silk worms (See: sweatshops).
2. Every man or woman who has ever put on a fireman’s, police, doctor’s, military, coal miner’s, or steel worker’s uniform are not impressed by sore thumbs, slight headaches, carpel tunnel syndrome, or self-imposed lack of sleep.
3. Way before blogs, the Hulkster told all of us about how the prayers, the vitamins and the exercise kept him strong. Oh, and other women. Forget the other women, find your serenity, and take care of yourself.
4. Smoking, pizza, and booze are bad for you. (But yeah, they do kinda rock.)
5. Sometimes it’s good to use real medical research.
6. Three events don’t make a trend. Six events don’t either. You’ll need eight per one thousand bloggers croaking to even approach the norm.
7. You can’t just not include a guy in your article because he doesn’t fit your sexy thesis/headline.
8. Some people are just obsessive, competitive freaks.
9. Some people are just narcissistic, obsessive, competitive freaks.
10. Some people are just greedy, narcissistic, obsessive, competitive freaks.
For me it was always the very public aspect of writing online that was stressful, not the job itself. I enjoy researching and writing, but I decided a long time ago what I would work myself to death for. Now my wife’s pregnant and I’ll have to add another thing. If that’s why you do it, bloggers, then more power to you. Just remember those checkups, put down the cheeseburger, do what the wife tells you (yeah, that’s a tough one, eh?), and learn when to take it easy.
