Will Blogging be the Death of us all?

There was an article published yesterday in the NY Times entitled In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop. In his article, Matt Richtel dicusses the exhausting, stressful life of full-time bloggers. He tells of two bloggers (both men, 50 and 60) who have died of heart attacks (one last December, the other two weeks ago):

“To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. But friends and family of the deceased, and fellow information workers, say those deaths have them thinking about the dangers of their work style.”

Yes, he really wrote “death by blogging.” Before I say anything that offends hard-working full-time bloggers, let me be clear that I know blogging is hard work and I know it can be stressful. However, I honestly doubt that it is any more stressful and heart-attack-inducing than whatever other jobs these men might have worked if they weren’t bloggers. This article should have run in The Onion, it is such sensationalistic bullsh!t.

After careful examination, it is clear that Richtel just didn’t bother to do his research. There are several assertions in this article that make that blindingly obvious. First, there is this comment:

“It is unclear how many people blog for pay, but there are surely several thousand and maybe even tens of thousands.”

It’s not really that unclear and it’s also many more than “even tens of thousands.” PayPerPost alone has over 50,000 members and that is just one place you can look to find bloggers who are making money. With the resources of the NY Times at his fingertips, Richtel should have been able to easily come up with an educated estimate. Perhaps the problem is, as Ken Fisher suggests, that Richter is only writing about one type of paid blogger.

Fisher points out that Richter only discusses bloggers in a newshound position who are constantly trying to be the first to break a story. The vast majority of bloggers, myself included, work under self-imposed deadlines. As I said, full-time bloggers work very hard and produce great content, but I don’t think blogging can be blamed for heart attacks. It would be one thing if hundreds of bloggers started dropping dead of massive heard failure, but that’s not the case. Every life counts and I am not trying to minimize the unfortunate deaths of the two men used as examples. I just think that “death by blogging” is not exactly an epidemic we need to be worrying about.

Another quote from Richter: “Blogging has been lucrative for some, but those on the lower rungs of the business can earn as little as $10 a post.” Bullsh!t. I don’t do sponsored posts anymore, but I used to. When I first started out $10 was a good amount per post. Try as little as $1 or $2. Jeez, Richtel, how many bloggers did you talk to? Four?

Part of this quote doesn’t even make sense to me: “Bloggers for such sites are often paid for each post, though some are paid based on how many people read their material. They build that audience through scoops or volume or both.” Yes, scoops and sheer number of articles (which is what I am guessing Richtel is referring to when he says “volume”) are two ways to build audience. However, in most niches the quality of the content, engagement of readers and many other more personal factors come into play in a much bitter way that “scoops” and “volume.” This is especially true if you consider blogging as a long-term business venture.

And then there is this beauty: “If a blogger is beaten by a millisecond, someone else’s post on the subject will bring in the audience, the links and the bigger share of the ad revenue.” I’m going to just quote Ken Fisher in reply to this one because he said it perfectly: “This is patently false; this is not how publishing online works in this highly-decentralized, aggregation/portal-driven business. It’s far, far more complex. More importantly, breaking news is not the only thing bloggers, even the “professional kind,” do.”

Okay, I’m sure you’re getting the point here, but I have one more snarky comment in reply to this quote:

“Mr. Lam [ed note: Brian Lam, editor of Gizmodo], who as a manager has a substantially larger income, works even harder. He is known to pull all-nighters at his own home office in San Francisco — hours spent trying to keep his site organized and competitive. He said he was well equipped for the torture; he used to be a Thai-style boxer.”

Because there are no other jobs where you might have to pull an all-nighter? Give me a break. As an IT professional, I know this is total crap. Any IT company worth working with does system updates and maintenance during non-working hours. It is also hard to estimate how long these tasks will take. So it’s nothing out of the ordinary for a telecom analyst or network admnistrator to work very long hours and pull all-nighters. This is not considered “torture,” it just comes with the territory. It is something you are aware of and accept before choosing certain career fields.

Maybe I’m totally off-base with this, but I don’t think I am. I think Matt Richtel is. The strange thing is, Richtel has been a tech journalist for years so it is suprising that he is not more knowledgable about blogging. Oh well. At least I don’t have to worry about offending him, it seems this isn’t the first time his writing has received poor reviews.