Blog till you croak?
Apr 5 at 8:08pm by Macranger
The Ny Times continues it’s slide into the epitome of the World Weekly News with this article about how blogging might just kill you in your pajamas?
“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.
Of course, the bloggers can work elsewhere, and they profess a love of the nonstop action and perhaps the chance to create a global media outlet without a major up-front investment. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly.
Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.
Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.
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.”
The article goes on to talking about blogger that actually make money from blogging and so face unbelievable stress keeping their blogs current. Ok, but I make a little from this blog, do three hours of radio a week and yet blogging is one of the most enjoyable things I do.
I guess it’s all individual but for God’s sake if it’s killing you go work for the Ny Times, seems to be a cakewalk over there.
UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers (thanks for the link Glenn). Take a look around while you’re here! While you’re at it check out the lastest edition of The MacRanger Show on Blog Talk Radio!
Blog Birthday Wishes
Mar 13 at 12:12pm by Macranger
“Back on March 13, 2003, this blog was born. Inspired by the desire to respond to the Dixie Chicks’ incessant whining about censorship and their inability to actually know what censorship was - and having grown tired of posting my thoughts randomly around the web and continually talking back to the talking heads on radio and television - I decided to try this little experiment.
Five years, a million hits, dozens of radio interviews, coverage in the nation’s biggest newspapers and two hurricanes later… here we are. It will be interesting to see what the next 5 years will bring”
Much of the same good stuff we’ve enjoyed! Happy Birthday!
LA Times - “No substitute for ‘real’ reporting”
Aug 19 at 2:02pm by Macranger
This editorial in the LA Times is the latest MSM salvo against bloggers. Writer Michael Skube lends us to believe that “real reporting” is best left the professionals.
“In our time, the Washington Post’s reporting, in late 2005, of the CIA’s secret overseas prisons and its painstaking reports this year on problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center — both of which won Pulitzer Prizes — were not exercises in armchair commentary. The disgrace at Walter Reed, true enough, was first mentioned in a blog, but the full scope of that story could not have been undertaken by a blogger or, for that matter, an Op-Ed columnist, whose interest is in expressing an opinion quickly and pungently. Such a story demanded time, thorough fact-checking and verification and, most of all, perseverance. It’s not something one does as a hobby.
The more important the story, the more incidental our opinions become. Something larger is needed: the patient sifting of fact, the acknowledgment that assertion is not evidence and, as the best writers understand, the depiction of real life. Reasoned argument, as well as top-of-the-head comment on the blogosphere, will follow soon enough, and it should. But what lodges in the memory, and sometimes knifes us in the heart, is the fidelity with which a writer observes and tells. The word has lost its luster, but we once called that reporting.”
Mind you that while the above mentioned story on CIA prisons won a Pulitzer Prize but it also irreparably harmed national security and allowed the enemies of the US - namely terrorists - a glimpse into how we try to find them. Nice job!
But I think Skube should have held his powder, especially considering the mirade of false tales told by the MSM over the last few years. That brings us to the veracity of the “real reporter”, a picture I might add isn’t selling papers. In poll after poll we see that the public doesn’t trust the average story from the average reporter. In fact is most of the lastest polls the question bias of reporters is believed more than the story they tell.
Of course that means that they believe reporter will lie on a dime to protect their view. As a consequence media outlets - like the LA Times are loosing subscriptions in droves and with more and more stories being found to be either blatantly incorrect and in some cases made up (hello Dan Rather), so they’re loosing credibility.
Of course it is interesting that Skube picks predominately on the blogs on the left for his vitriol, most of which are notorious for muckraking and thus I could give him points for choosing his subjects wisely.
