Bullshit. Classic piece of sensationalized make-news on the front page this morning.
Synopsis.: Two bloggers died recently and one had a heart attack due to the always-on nature, every-minute-is-a-deadline world of blogging.
First off, as Dan Warner, the nasty editor in chief of the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune told a roomful of rebellious reporters (myself included) in 1984: “You want stress? I’ll show you stress. Go work in air traffic control or be a single mother on food stamps.” (He then turned the room over to a “stress consultant” who told us to close our eyes and relax our muscles beginning at our toes, moving up to the follicles of our hair).
I know and knew two of the bloggers in Richtel’s piece. Om Malik is a good friend to me, but not to the gym. The fact the guy had a heart attack earlier this year is not because he ignored the surgeon general’s warning on the side of his blog: GigaOm. Marc Orchant died in December. I knew Marc from our work with Foldera, the SaaS collaboration play. Did his blog do him in? Did it contribute to his untimely death at 50? Cmon.
And Arrington gains 30 pounds. Welcome to the club. I packed on an extra 25 in the last year myself and it was more due to being a fat ass without a bicycle than anything else.
And so some Gizmodo bloggers fall asleep at their desks. Every afternoon half of America’s office rats nod off in meetings about next month’s meeting about the TPS report meeting after they get around a Bacon Lover’s Triple-Pounder and a supersized fries at lunch.
If the point is that life is one constant deadline, okay, I’ll buy that. But this blog-as-sweatshop meme that has been percolating around the Gawker/Forbes.com world of Manhattan indentured 20-something servitude for the last five years is the same crap fact checkers went through in the magazine world in the 1980s: long hours, party till you drop, and nutrition via ramen.
Does anyone care anymore who got it first?
Right on!
Type A obsessive compulsives have been dying early of coronaries since the days when Ooogg realized he could get more animal skins than the other neandethals and avoid having to go home to Mrs. Ooogg if he worked longer and harder at the obsidian spear point factory.
While I may be an overwieght blogging coding fool, I realize that it is possible to step away from the computer once in a while. I can get on my bike and take a leisurely ride, without feeling the need to work up to the panmass challenge. I’m learning that fishing at the pond for perch with the girls can be as much fun as tuna fishing on a 42′ Luhrs. Not everything needs to be a comptetition; I don’t need to be the absolute best at everything.
48 years and I’m finally learning that the best place to be and the best thing to be doing is whatever you’re doing right now! So smile, darnit!
It will also soon come to pass that it isn’t “who had it first” but “who covered it best” that will matter.
Hi David, Cheers on the first line. says it all!
“Does anyone care anymore who got it first?”
absolutely not. this was why i stopped reading Scoble years back when he initially went with the “it’s better to get it first than get it right” assertion (even after he recanted, i didn’t take it back up).
i care far more about the take than i do about the speed. anyone can report something quickly; far fewer can give me context and explain the significance appropriately.
if i have to wait a few hours or even a few minutes to read something, what do i care? unless it’s capital markets we’re talking about, that “delay” means exceptionally little.
in my view, anyway.