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Writers Find Blogging To Be a Stressful Method of Reporting
Andrew Feinberg points out a New York Times story about the stress put upon prolific bloggers to maintain a constant flow of content in order to satisfy both consumers and advertisers in the information age. When breaking a story first can generate thousands more page views and clicks, many bloggers are finding themselves chained to their computers, worrying that they'll miss something important if they step away. Quoting:
" '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."
Reminds me of Maddox. I check his page almost everyday for updates and get angry every time he hasn't posted new content. I only abstain from complaining due to fear of having my email posted!
Get a real job!
if he's made millions of dollars, can't he just move to a small island off the coast of Mexico and have young women make him ceviche, bring him beer, and blow him for the rest of his life?
I gained 30 lbs once, and I've since dropped the weight, but I have nothing to show for it. I wonder if we'll get an article here soon about how executives making millions of dollars are stressed out.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
I once wrote a rhyme about this. Maybe you'll like it: http://www.bigsmoke.us/bloggers-block/
Morality is usually taught by the immoral.
Seriously, does anyone get their 'news' from blogs? Granted they can be interesting and helpful, they are often written with no editing and read more like "On the Road" than The New York Times.
Congratulations on developing income through traffic but it pains me to see people use this as a way to stay informed.
If you never leave your basement you're not reporting, you're aggregating or spinning.
My work here is dung.
If it's that big a problem just stop and get a normal job, or, if you've really made millions in revenue pay someone to do the stressful stuff for you.
Is it really so hard? Have I missed something here?
Bloggers need both better technologies and better business models so that people can make a decent income blogging. It's a decent career but there's just not enough money in it yet to make it worth the pain and stress. We need alternative business models to increase the value of the blogsphere. Anyone got ideas?
Do something else. There is NO REASON to kill yourself over something that most people have no respect for anyway.
Even most people with internet don't read/trust/use blogs, including myself.
Seriously, fucking do something else.
[_] Go hunting with Dick Cheney - problem solved!
[_] Dude! If you've gained 30 pounds, sustenance isn't your problem. More like "sustenance abuse."
[_] Get a bigger chair - it'll sustain your additional weight.
[_] Get up and go for a walk. There's a reason the dot-com boom had lots of dogs in offices - it forced people to get up and walk their dogs! This got them away from their computers for a bit, so that when they came back, they were refreshed, and more productive.
[_] Set your site up as Yahoo!'s "ugly sister" for when Microsoft is looking for more "sustenance".
[_] More typeing and less eating.
[_] Move to a real office instead of working from home - or LOCK THE FRIDGE!
[_] Profit from it - start a blog about how blogging makes you fat. Lots of fat people will then take up blogging, as their "excuse" for being fattarded wankers.
Could it be that blogging is not a solo sport?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Learn to live on less than a million dollars a year. That would free up some of that income to capitalize the infrastructure.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Bloggers talk incessantly about blogging... News at 11:00!
I get a bit tired of people who complain about their job or life, yet never take the steps necessary to alleviate the cause of said complaints. It's your life. Take some responsibility for it. Exercise more. Take a well-needed vacation (and leave the damn computer at home)! Spend some quality time with family and friends. I'll bet that when you look back at your life, you won't regret spending a bit less time at the computer, staring at updating blogs.
I also tire of how certain media industries talk about themselves as relevant news... I see this happen in the mainstream media all the time (stories about the media), and I find it somewhat annoying. Blogging has the same sort of problem - many bloggers talk incessantly about blogging and other bloggers, since that's the topic they know best.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Close to 50% of the page space is ads. Very slow loading ads. And annoying javascript popups. Just start moving your mouse around and hover-triggered popups start going off like landmines.
How can people stand to go there on a regular basis?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
There is a simple solution... Do something else...
Deleted
Overall I look forward to making money by telecommuting and working from home. Nothing good comes from getting dressed up each morning to go to work and be around people I probably don't care to be around in the first place.
However, blogging has to actually be making people rich. If a site is bringing in millions in ad revenue, and the individual blogger guy is making under $100,000 a year, of course somethings wrong with that.
Now, if you make $100,000 a year working from your home, yes it's worth having a nervous breakdown over, but if you make $30,000, then hell no it's not.
Ideally, bloggers should just get a portion of the ad revenue and get rich along with the website. Either way, if this guy gained 30lbs it's not because of his career, it's because he refused to exercise and eat right.
If a guy gains 30lbs, and is psychologically stressed out, maybe this guy should become a fireman or construction worker where he can do hard labor every day. And if being a blogger is oo stressful maybe he should go to Iraq and fight for his country.
Seriously, this article looks to me like a lot of whining. Most people have more difficult jobs than his job. Now, my post is not all about insulting the person in the article. I'll explain my intentions below:
A. Increase the value of bloggers and the telecommuting community (we should all be able to work from home!)
B. Maximize the amount of money telecommuters can make.
I think these should be the two goals of the telecommuting community. Maximize growth and income potential, and increase the value of telecommuting to society overall.
Getting dressed up to go to work should be a thing of the past. It's better for roads, it's better for the environment. It's healthier, because the average person can be more productive from home than they are going to work, because at work someone can have the flu and infect everyone.
If you are a libertarian, telecommuting increases your sense of freedom and thus your quality of life. Why do you want to be micromanaged by a boss? The main two concerns are maximizing the amount of money which bloggers make (through technological design, activism, bloggers unions and guilds etc), and maximizing the overall value of the blogsphere and of industries which support the telecommuter community.
There should be a blog about how stressful blogs are for writers.
If you are a blogger, set your hours. Sure, you'll violate them once in a while (I'm posting from work on a Sunday...I'm in a crunch time in my business - it happens). But seriously, if you don't post for 14 hours a day, the world will not stop. Provided that you have people to do the shifts to keep the information flowing, people will not abandon the blog forever. Taco doesn't spend 20 hours a day posting dupes - he's hired people to do that.
This isn't really about blogging, it's about small business. Small, one man shops really are a drain on your life. You fear that if you close too early or open too late you'll miss that one big customer. Until you get big enough to spread the load, that will be the case.
A note for bloggers - you might want to move. There were two in that story - one in SF, one (I believe) in NY. Note: you're bloggers, nobody cares where you live and you can source from anywhere in the (US/NA/World). Based on the "all day and night at the keyboard" comments, these folks aren't getting their inside scoops from wandering the streets of the big technology cities. Might I suggest somewhere inexpensive, somewhere relaxing from which to blog. Make it within 100 miles of an airline hub if you do a lot of conferences. Office space in small towns is often $8/SF (per year) or less, and really good housing is actually affordable on 40k-50k/yr.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Mike's got it easy. I own a small business, with six employees. We do Flash games, web development, and other custom software projects. On Friday I wasn't feeling so well. A bit of the flu, I suppose. Regardless of my health, our work must go on. So there the entire company was, sitting in our 10x10 meeting room with two representatives from one of our larger clients. In short, I shit my pants. It wasn't a solid shit, either. It was diarrhea that ended up dripping down my legs onto my shoes, and then onto the carpet. And in a meeting room as small as ours, packed with nine people in it, it isn't an enjoyable experience. Needless to say, the reps from our client were not impressed. And tomorrow I get to deal with the repercussions of the whole ordeal. Since I clean our office (we can't afford a cleaning firm), I'll probably get to clean up the now-dried stool that has no doubt been sitting there all weekend.
This is not sustainable
Not sustainable? I beg to differ.
The companies have been racing to produce as much as possible in the shortest time possible since the beginning of industrial revolution.
First mover advantage is obviously very significant in this industry of information delivery. Which is why you need to build in redundancy and share workload as well as rewards with others.
Simple but effective solution: divide the day into shifts, and have people work several shifts to overlap and update those just beginning their work day.
DUH.
Blog - 1 man newspaper.
So of course if he and his 4 man team aren't writing content people aren't getting anything new. Traditional printed material (and their online versions) have lots of authors writing so if one writer (say in sports) goes on vacation someone else is there to tell me the Yankee's blew it again.
I also wonder what percentage of bloggers actually do field research (ie: get away from the computer) rather than using online only resources.
The greed behind thinking "I *must* make $100k+ to survive" is one of the many factors sending this industry down the toilet. Every blogger should want to make $100k. It's good for the internet economy and for the blogging community if bloggers make $100k and up. Doctors, Lawyers, CEO's and other professions make over $100k, and I don't see you saying "It's because those Lawyers make over $100k that the legal system is going down the toilet."
The more money you have coming in, the better off you'll be, it's that simple, and if you want to live cheap, then you probably wont be able to afford private school for your kids, and you might not be able to afford the best medical treatments or the best healthcare plan.
And let's be realistic, if you are single, most of the good women prefer a man who makes over $100k vs a man living in the middle of nowhere making $30k.
What kinda man do most dads tell their daughters to go for? The Lawyer, the Doctor, the CEO, the very sorta man who just happens to be making over $100k.
A number of professions live under the 'publish or perish' gun. University professors, freelance journalists, freelance photographers, ad copy writers, script writes etc.
Nothing to see here, move along....
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
95% of all 'professional' blogging is bloggers quoting and pasting other bloggers, to either agree violently with them or talk shit about them.
I don't know about you, but I want my time to be worth the absolute maximum amount of money possible. I value my time, and I love my life, and I don't want to waste my time and my life making somebody else rich. I want to make myself rich.
And women prefer powerful men. If you want a "good" woman, assuming you don't have one already, having money and power helps, unless you plan on being a fireman, cop, or work for a non profit and then perhaps you get women through status. But the simple fact is, the more money you make, the better able you are to protect your wife and kids.
Proof? Look at Africa, no money, and as a result no security. Look at this country, look in the ghettos and trailer parks, no money = no security. The more money you have, the more security you have, because society decides our worth by our salary.
Don't you think you're worth more than this?
You mean that gaining money through blogging means it has to be stressful like a real work ? really I'm shocked, I thought it was free money !
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Wow, this is interesting. I better blog about it...
Certainly you've never been to Mexico.
I never said chefs and I never said hookers. The exchange rate on personal relationship is way better in Mexico anyway.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
This isn't really about blogging, it's about small business. Small, one man shops really are a drain on your life. You fear that if you close too early or open too late you'll miss that one big customer. Until you get big enough to spread the load, that will be the case.
A note for bloggers - you might want to move. There were two in that story - one in SF, one (I believe) in NY. Note: you're bloggers, nobody cares where you live and you can source from anywhere in the (US/NA/World). Based on the "all day and night at the keyboard" comments, these folks aren't getting their inside scoops from wandering the streets of the big technology cities. Might I suggest somewhere inexpensive, somewhere relaxing from which to blog. Make it within 100 miles of an airline hub if you do a lot of conferences. Office space in small towns is often $8/SF (per year) or less, and really good housing is actually affordable on 40k-50k/yr. If they move out of San Francisco and out of New York, then there will be less women to choose from, from which to marry. What if they like the women in San Fran and New York?
I'm sure most bloggers wont be marrying professional women but if you actually WANT to, then the big city is the place to find these women and this could be the main reason some of them live in these places.
I don't rule out the possibility that the guy living in San Francisco could be gay, but once again, you completely ignore the fact that there's a very large concentration of physically attractive single women in these areas that probably wont be found in the less densely populated places like North Dakota, Idaho, or Montana.
The problem with living in small towns is, it's hard as hell to find a mate in a small town. Thats the main reason most people leave the small town for the big city in the first place.
Your post wasn't completely wrong, you are right on it being more efficient to live and work in a small town. And if these guys have wives, maybe they can do that for a few years. But most people aren't going to want to find a wife in Idaho, and most people aren't going to want to raise kids in Idaho either.
But even in the case of building airplanes, the design could be done at home.
That's 13.6 kilos for those in metric countries.
A revolving team of reporters contributing to a blog would probably alleviate the stress. Even just maintaining a personal blog can be stressful if you feel that you (alone) should post regularly to maintain other's interest.
I don't mean that in a negative way - there's nothing wrong with a small penis. But you seem very concerned about finding a woman who will have you, and you seem to feel that cash is the only way to "score" a good woman.
And you don't need to move to Bumfuck, Idaho. Find a city with 50k-200k people and you'll have a pretty good selection, but still be where you can afford to live on a 5 figure salary. The outskirts of Charlotte or Greensboro, NC come to mind, or even larger like some of the 'burbs around Raleigh. Even better, and closer to my 50-200k number, find a town with a major college. Blacksburg and Charlottesville, VA, or Amhearst, MA, or Ithaca, NY. All small towns with great primary and secondary schools, affordable housing, and lots of hot chicks.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
"They work long hours, often to exhaustion."
When I got started in programming in the late 1970's I used to hear similar things about the health risks. A programmer who worked across the street had to be hospitalized for a nervous breakdown after many months of 100 hour (no paid overtime) work weeks. I went to a party with my coworkers where their wives cornered me in the kitchen and told me to "get out now".
Since it looks like computer related jobs haven't changed a bit in 30 years, I'll bet the next New York Times article on the subject concerns blogging ruining marriages.
Person who runs his own company has been found to have earned much but worked his ass off and has become fat and with little spare time.
More news at 11.
The first few paragraphs of this article are so melodramatic that you might be able to convince me it came from The Onion rather than the NY Times. Was the writer bored; felt like being a little dramatic? Did all the editors have the day off? Either way, nice job, NY Times, you've at least amused me.
Brilliant.
...)
You're insulting Staples Inc's lawyers.
Watch them send you a friendly warning letter.
(Somewhere, on the 17th floor of the Staples Building. Terrance in Counsel says to himself
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
There's this thing called a 'shift'. I think it was a military invention originally, but the principle carries over well to other industries. It's really cool. Basically, you get at least three people, and you *take turns* being the one who has to be available at all times -- for a few (usually eight) hours at a time, and then the next guy relieves you and takes the next shift, and you're free to go home and sleep and stuff.
It seems to be really catching on. Might be the next big thing. You should try it.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Dear Slashdot Editors,
Please stop mangling my submissions. I did not submit to you the NYT article. I submitted the commentary to the NYT article which I wrote as a tech/public policy blogger reacting to the story. I find the way you guys now strip out submitters content and simply link to the "mainstream" article insulting and really makes me want to contribute to the discussions less and less. Why is my contribution less valuable than the NYT article? I think my commentary as an informed reader adds much to the discussion, and could have done quite a bit to improve the quality of comments here.
Is there a reason you no longer link to other people's submissions, only their mainstream media material?
I have been a Slashdot reader since 1998-1999. I read less and less. This is why. While I took the time to format, edit, and submit a story containing links to both the original NYT article and my own commentary you found it OK to strip out my entire submission and bury it in your worthless "firehose" and instead simply use me as a tip-off instead of a contributor to a community which I have been on for over ten years. Check my UID.
Is original (ie, not from "news sites") content no longer relevant on Slashdot? Hey Malda, Bates? Remember me? When did your site become a news aggregator instead of a place to discuss ideas, not just rehash articles from mainstream press? I don't feel like part of a community right now. I feel like I'm doing work just so someone else can take the credit. I spent a good amount of time writing that post that I linked you to, and you all but ignored it.
Why?
Andrew Feinberg
Angry Slashdot Veteran
http://xkcd.com/369/
http://mrcopilot.blogspot.com/2008/01/died-in-blogging-accident.html
Or maybe it's fear, the fear of a man soaring over a city a year and a day after he first learned that he could fly. Fear that the ability will disappear as mysteriously as it appeared, and without warning he will plummet to his death.
Actually, I've mapped the few hours of story arcs on
People with "Programmer's Ethic" work well from home, but other posts are correct that the types of people who subconsciously need the flow of people around them begin to drift when working from home.
This is where non-time metrics can sometimes be fun if they're not too tightly calibrated. "I don't care what you do with your time so long as you post 137 stories on
If that means a 3 hour break on Tuesday from 11 AM till 2Pm with a large pizza, large Hunan Chicken, 4 Liters of Dew, a bowl of wings, and 7 friends, go for it. Then after the "American Siesta" you can go back to work from 2PM until midnight.
Blogging is really starting to allow non-traditional working hours. It might take a couple decades more, but eventually the Brick&Mortar world will begin to notice that it's no fun anymore for every business to be open only from 8:15AM until 4PM if their customers are working from 6:45AM until 4:45PM.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
And you don't need to move to Bumfuck, Idaho. Find a city with 50k-200k people and you'll have a pretty good selection, but still be where you can afford to live on a 5 figure salary. The outskirts of Charlotte or Greensboro, NC come to mind, or even larger like some of the 'burbs around Raleigh. Even better, and closer to my 50-200k number, find a town with a major college. Blacksburg and Charlottesville, VA, or Amhearst, MA, or Ithaca, NY. All small towns with great primary and secondary schools, affordable housing, and lots of hot chicks. It's not penis size that counts, it's wallet size.
Women by nature are more attracted to powerful men.
And it's a fact that there aren't a lot of good women on earth, so if you go to a small city you'll just have less of a selection of a scarce commodity.
Would you go to the desert in search of water? No of course not. College towns are a good option, but college towns are near big cities, and most people don't stay in them beyond 4 years.
Most blogs out there are not adding anything new. If you're one of those, quit.
Maybe you have some dedicated fans who comment on things, but why not move those commentators further into the mainstream so that we can have more diverse insights into the news stories? This is slashdot, and there are technically-minded people here, so there is a bias of self-selection. There are celeb blogs, political blogs, random blogs, auto enthusiast blogs, and all sorts of stuff I'd rather not mention. All with the same problem - the news gets to them, but not past them into the wider audience. And certainly the comments don't either.
If you're adding value by breaking new stories, or adding information/details to existing stories, then concentrate on adding value, not satiating your masses. If you're not adding value, please quit and reduce the amount of duplication on the intartubes. And quit whining, it's not becoming.
If he is drawing millions in revenue (since millions is plural, and it is three years, we will presume that is at least 1 million per year), and he has only 4 employees, AND his office is in his home... he is doing something wrong if he is still stressed and in ill health.
First: four employees, if they are competent, should be enough to keep a blog going by themselves, relieving him of said stress. If not, he needs better people.
Second: if this is not parts of California or New York, he should be able to find those employees for an average of $50k each, making $200,000. Hire them right out of college; they will be ecstatic to be making that much.
Double that figure to cover things like office overhead and business expenses (he's in his HOME, and it is an INTERNET business!) and so on. Don't need very much in the way of benefits, either, in an office of 4 employees. That's $400,000.
That leaves $600,000 for him.
Okay, I have not figured in taxes and so on. But that should not make more of a difference than around 30% to 40% one way or another. I could live on an income of $360,000 a year. In fact I would probably be having a lot of fun.
And if I wasn't, I would hire a goddamned manager for $80,000 to $100,000 of that, and go play with my $260,000. Maybe invest in another company with my money and now completely SPARE time, and do the same all over again... $520,000 / year, and still no stress.
This guy needs a clue.
I like to cook. People tell me "Gee, you should become a professional chef." Heh, wrong idea, sparky. There's a huge difference between whipping up a meal for a few friends and putting out that kind of quality for a dinner seating 200. Likewise, there's a huge difference between doing a little bit of amateur writing for fun versus doing it for a living.
I like to write. I would be terrified to do so in a professional capacity. It takes me sooo long to write anything I'm satisfied with and sometimes the muse doesn't hit for weeks. When you hit the Big Leagues, there's no time for whining, crying, or saying you lack for inspiration. "We need content and we need it now. Give it to us or we'll find someone else who can."
I have nothing but sympathy for the bloggers out there who are trying to make a living at it. They're joining the ranks of creative types throughout history who have long suffered from trying to strike a balance between art and commerce. I know I can't be that good that consistently for such a long period. When I look at the ridiculously large writing staff of quality shows like the Daily Show and Colbert Report, I think "Damn straight, it takes that many people to make it happen." I'm in awe of smaller creative teams who manage to crank out the quality time after time after time. I've got a story I'm working on right now where my head is slamming against the wall. I have a good start, a good ending, but everything I'm trying to write in the middle is just falling short. I know it's crap, anyone else reading would know it's crap, but I have the luxury of not showing it to anyone until I have it fixed. If I had a deadline, out the door it would go, crap and all. That's a scary thought.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Yes, it's lost all meaning. Blog, bloggers, blogging, blogosphere. I've got blogophobia.
A whopping 120 characters to take your mind off topic. Tested in MS Word.
But when you have a wife and kids, then you'll have to pay for private school, and college, and whatever the kids need to be as successful as you are, and the wife will expect that because it's a mans job to provide for his family.
That's what being a man is all about.
To each his own, I suppose. No woman wants to raise kids with a bum. A woman wants a man who can make her feel safe, because the world is a scary and dangerous place. Women also want a shoulder to cry on when times are tough, so ideally women want BOTH likeable and rich.
However when women have to choose between the rich/powerful/strong asshole, and the weak/bum/jobless asshole, which asshole is she going to choose?
Most of us are either very likeable and very poor (myself included), or rich jerks. The majority of women still go for the rich jerks over the likeable poor fellow which proves that despite what you say, women DO have needs and DO want providers.
And I see nothing wrong with the system, it's a man's job to provide for and protect his family. And a woman should choose the man who is best able to protect her and her kids, because that's the rational choice, and it's natural.
The only reason it can be a problem is when the rich guy also happens to be a complete asshole who treats women like shit, but he's so rich and so powerful that he still manages to keep a good woman.
So in essence, good women are attracted to power, and in my opinion, a good woman deserves to be with a man who is both srong AND good, rather than a man who is weak and good. It's just the rational decision.
I get news from Slashdot and Digg mostly. Very rarely do I browse news.google.com.
:P
What's a blog? Quite frankly, there's little difference between a blog (some lone nut posting stories, with tons of users commenting) and sites like Slashdot and Digg (a bunch of nuts posting stories, with tons of users commenting).
Hell, any way you get your news, you're going to get bias, misinformation and downright bad reporting. I'd rather have CowboyNeal's bias than some paid shill from the NYT's bias.
Not to mention that creative jobs don't pay much (unless you're in something like the top 1% of the top 1% or so), because so many people want to write, or paint, or act, or sing, or blog, or whatever. Nor is there any security. (A friend told me this is why so many actors do drugs: they make a lot of money, have absolutely no assurance that they will ever work again, and want anything that will give them even a slight edge so they might have work next month.)
Anybody who can make millions blogging has got to be worried about what happens with just a little slack-off. Take a little time off, and it's frighteningly possible that the advertising revenues will drop into the thousands, permanently.
Not the lifestyle for me.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Physical inactivity and long hours at the computer have many physically unhealthy aspects.
Another aspect, unreported in mainstream press asfaik, is the prevalence of blood clots that long hours at a computer can create in people. This once was only associated with long airline flights. Now it is occurring in programmers and others who sit in front of a computer for long periods of time.
More information at Long hours at computers may cause blood clots.
God can have that stupid asshole Michael Arrington and his whole staff forever if we can just get one more year with Russell Shaw. Deal? We'll even throw in NYT idiots who post sensationalist bullshit.
...that on top of that can be done from anywhere in the world. Hire one guy in Europe working 8-5 CET = 11PM-8AM PST and two on the west coast working alternately 8-5 PST and 5-11 PST (shorter for being evening hours) and you got the day covered. Throw in one more guy on the east coast alternating between working early for CET guy and late for PST guys and you'll have a normal schedule with time off on weekends etc. Seriously, is this anything more stressful or complicated than say servers with 24h watch, guard duty, services like hospitals etc? This is not rocket science, people do this in plenty jobs around the world. This is just whining.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
In that case you have an unusual personality from the typical slashdot computer geek.
Myself, I don't like gossip, I don't care what my coworkers had for dinner or whats going on in their lives. I don't want to have to drink coffee.
What if some of us want to just wake up and work from the moment we wake up until the moment we fall asleep and then repeat that for weeks or months at a time, taking breaks only for food, sex, and showering/shaving etc.
What if we want to live like a hermit and focus on nothing but our work, the beautiful code that we produce might be more interesting to us than the words which come out of coworkers mouths.
I don't want to be at home all the time. I like to leave the house and I'm generally not productive when at home. I go to work to be at work and I go home to be at home. I would rather never mix the two. Why do you need downtime from work? Why don't you just live your job?
Take a sleeping bag with you to work, sleep at work and then you don't have to pay for a home you probably never spend much time in anyway.
Really, this seems to me to be evidence of the results of tearing down boundaries between the public and the private, work and home, and the overall limitations placed upon personal space in modern work processes.
Basically, we're going to find out that there is a downside to telecommuting, etc. People need more than a cubicle. They need a place to be alone.
Every person needs to a way to get away from their work. I can still remember those old AT&T ads, back when AT&T was more than just a rebranded SBC, and their famous question "How would you like to do your work on the beach?" My answer was a uncategorical: no.
I want to smell the salt air when I go to the beach. The admonition is clear: Turn off your cellphone, and assorted gadgetry, and take a break, or you will break.
--
Toro
...is what my brother A., an editor at the major daily in a midsize east coast city calls it. You've sold ads, no matter what happens there's going to be a paper printed over night, so you'd better get busy and fill it with news. Doing so gets extremely difficult when everyone who makes interesting things happen goes on vacation in August.
It's quite fatiguing for newspaper pros, and they have a lot of resources to back them up - wire copy not the least of it ("wire copy": that's "old-school RSS" for you younguns).
Bloggers coulda' learned this in J-school. Some of 'em did.
The consequences are the journalism equivalent of the effects of the devolution of power that's occurred in every other facet of the "digital revolution".
It's the same with the recording, photographic and video industries, graphic arts, virtually every other trade that's suddenly put the means of production in the hands of the proles: "you wanted the power, now go to it, buddy!"
my one grandfather drove tanks around in france in the early to mid 1940-s. my other grandfather drove submarines around the pacific, same timeframe. my uncle was a forward artillery spotter in nam, and my dad flew cobra attack helos there as well. i have a few buddies at work that were in gulf war one and/or two. and i'm sure even being a police officer is a far, far, far more stressful job than being a %*(#*$& blogger. it's a bunch of whining if a keyboard commando is complaining that their job is stressful. grr. posted anonymous cause i suppose this is flamebait.
So, it has come to this. The NYT has stooped to the levels of yellow journalism.
... health?) to keep us, the faithful readers, informed.
You know, on second thought the NYT is right. We should salute and honor our favorite bloggers who sacrifice their time (and err
Michael Yon, Bill Rogio, Michael Totten, the entire staff at IraqSlogger.com, and all the *smart* liberal and conservative bloggers out there - I salute you!
Notorious 'splogger' who still gets stories on /. from time to time.
/. stories.
/.ers have at him and his 'stories' surely lead the editors to a 'horse's mouth' approach when editing stories: only stories from well-known for-profit media outlets will be linked to--who cares what Joe Schmoe has to say on the matter (even if he does have a low /. UID) :P ....
He even has a Greasemonkey script created to 'strip out' his
Because of Roland and the anger
Face it...Slashdot has (already) sold out. They know their 3rd party ads are being blocked (I do as I'm not a CTO who would be interested in them) so they let the 'slashvertisements' that come their way through that tout the latest and greatest tech gadgets. I ignore those 'stories' as well....
I think the main problem is that people have a fixation on getting the latest news instead of writing insightful content that could be relevant for months to come. Thats one thing I dont like about news blogging.. there is usually a ton of blogs saying the same thing.
Tell that Bob Woodruff.
The next day?! It was only 132 years ago that the overland telegraph was completed from Adelaide(ish) to Darwin (only 3200km). Before the overland and undersea telegraphs, news would come via ship from England to Perth, Pt Augusta, then Sydney many months later.
When the telegraph to Sydney was completed (before the Darwin telegraph) reporters would travel to Perth, hop on the ship to write up their news stories, and then wire them to Sydney when they arrived in Pt Augusta. This would save a few weeks!
When the undersea cable was completed from Java to Darwin, the overland cable wasn't quite ready by a stretch of a few kms. To save the large penalties involved for late completion, horsemen would transcript the message to paper, ride the gap, and re-wire them the rest of the way!
Even with this uncompleted section, news times dropped from months to just days.
Fast forward a hundred or so years, to a small island in the Indian Ocean where I used to live in the early 90's. One weeks TV and news coverage would be recorded from the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) and then flown to the island for viewing the following week. When the plane was delayed due to weather etc. we would be without any news for a week. When it finally arrived we could choose whether to watch the oldest news first, or the latest news first. We'd often get news of a cyclone coming our way the week after it had passed!
Fast forward again to 9-11 as you mention, and my brother rang me up after the first "event". I turned on cable tv to watch the rest of it live from many different angles.
When Steve Irwin died, I got an SMS within minutes of the story breaking and I could confirm early reports minutes later on the internet.
What will we be complaining about in another 100 years?
Online diaries to share your daily drama with friends and strangers. That's it.
If you are writing something for a living, it's not a blog entry, it's an article. Journalists write articles or stories. Analysts write articles and reviews and white papers. Angsty kids write blogs. Using a blog like interface or posting daily, does not make it a blog. The nature of the content makes it a blog.
There is a tendency to over- and misuse buzz words. Blog is one of the worst culprits.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
I understand that there is stress involved with having to keep up with a reader base that expects content 24 hours a day, but I agree with all of the people who suggest hiring more staff to meet the demand if you can afford it. But I still think bloggers should just be happy that they are getting paid for what they do at all. Most aspiring/freelance writers would happily take the "stress" written about in this article in exchange for earning MILLIONS (or even anything more than $20-30K/year) in exchange for what they do. Don't forget that if you are blogging full-time and performing no other job, you are not a doctor or a professor or a lawyer or an engineer, you are a writer. Let's look at the average salaries for journalists, shall we? I think the current system is as fair as it can be. Hm, Michael Arrington apparently reviewed the PayScale website. Maybe he should have actually used it.