Is professional blogging a lethal form of science writing?
Maxine Clarke
Sunday, 06 April 2008 13:37 UTC
Article in the New York Times today
“SAN FRANCISCO — They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece — not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home.
A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.”
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later:
” “I haven’t died yet,” said Michael Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a popular technology blog. The site has brought in millions in advertising revenue, but there has been a hefty cost. Mr. Arrington says he has gained 30 pounds in the last three years, developed a severe sleeping disorder and turned his home into an office for him and four employees. “At some point, I’ll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen.”
“This is not sustainable,” he said.
It is unclear how many people blog for pay, but there are surely several thousand and maybe even tens of thousands.”
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Replies
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You mean to say, people do this for a living?. Oy.
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Give me millions a year in advertising revenue and I’ll willingly blog exactly what it’s like to be so stressed.
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Heather Anderson actually turned blogging into a full time job for herself, and now for her husband. It all started when she blogged about her job, and then work found it. Needless to say, when they read about themselves (like the guy in the office who feels the need to congratulate himself on every sale), she was fired. She promptly got an interview on ABC news interview and a wikipedia entry.
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Never mind blogging, what about even keeping up with reading the “constant stream of news and comment”?! I daily feel pangs of guilt at all the ‘unread’ articles on my RSS reader and save more articles on Connotea than I ever have any hope of reading.
We need recognition of “web information exhaustion”! How about as a subclause to the proposed DSM-VI entry on internet addiction?!
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It was lethal for this Washington Post writer.
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Helen, you will be happy to hear that Web 3.0 will be about reducing the Noise.
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Fascinating, but scary, link, Martin. Explains rather well why I lasted one day on Twitter “way back when”.
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@Martin – how horrifying. Makes one hanker for the good old days of small pieces of paper carried around in cleft sticks.
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I know a few professional bloggers, but they were all “for fun” bloggers before and just turned their hobby into their job. But with all jobs there’ll always be people who work way too hard at it.
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Wow, something like Twhirl would actually send me into total information overload!
I’ve stayed pretty clear of sites like this and Twitter, as, to be honest, I don’t really want to read what my friends are up to every minute of the day. I can just imagine how mine might read:
09.39 Laments over adding too much milk to morning coffee
09.41 Sips coffee and stares vacantly at pile of documents in it-tray
09.43 Shifts gaze to staring vacantly at wall…
You get the idea – it would be deathly boring!It’s less the ‘noise’ I have a problem with, more the accumulation of interesting articles to read. RSS readers have made it a lot easier to keep on top of it all.
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