The New York Times, always on the lookout for a body count:
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.
***
The pressure even gets to those who work for themselves  and are being well-compensated for it.
“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.â€Â
Normally, this is where I would add some commentary, probably something about this becoming the pretext for the nanny state to regulate blogging. But I have already commented here a bit today and I am trying to lose weight.
(h/t Memeorandum.)
Comment by JD on 4/5 @ 7:56 pm #
I lost 10 pounds in the last couple weeks. I blame Karl, and Dan. And Halliburton, but not KBR.
Comment by happyfeet on 4/5 @ 7:59 pm #
Is it ironic or just sad that the only actual quotation marks in that passage are the scare quotes for pay-per-click?
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 4/5 @ 8:02 pm #
He said the evolution of the “pay-per-click†economy has put the emphasis on reader traffic and financial return, not journalism.
‘Cause, ya know, newspapers in previous generations never had to worry about circulation numbers or advertising revenue. Nope.
Comment by happyfeet on 4/5 @ 8:06 pm #
I’m also a little unclear about the qualitative distinction between dying from a coronary and dying from a massive coronary.
Comment by Karl on 4/5 @ 8:29 pm #
Actually, they didn’t. Now they do, and are blaming those dang bloggers. Oooh — just felt a tingling in my left arm ;-)
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 4/5 @ 8:31 pm #
- So now we need to be aware that blogging, and/or commenting, makes you ass look fat.
- Does nishi know about this?
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 4/5 @ 8:36 pm #
…Amanda…Jane…Wonkette…Andrew?
Comment by Mikey NTH on 4/5 @ 9:03 pm #
Let me see.
Yep - weight gain. I blame blogs.
Oh - and the beer.
Comment by Karl on 4/5 @ 9:22 pm #
Sadly, I cannot blame beer. There’s some new study linking the sleep deprivation to wight gain, though.
Comment by McGehee on 4/5 @ 9:27 pm #
I believe in a massive coronary, the heart muscle literally explodes, sending shards of deadly heart shrapnel flying about the room and causing potential additional casualties.
Also, Kyoto.
Comment by Little Miss Attila on 4/5 @ 9:36 pm #
So the solution is to avoid the danger of blogging by . . . riding/driving around in a car all day. Right? ‘Cause, that’s, like, much safer . . .
I like how they don’t “know” that the blogging caused the deaths, but they don’t mind insinuating it.
Comment by Karl on 4/5 @ 9:47 pm #
“All the news that’s fit to insinuate.”
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 4/5 @ 9:51 pm #
- I just had a thought. Since we’re talking NYT here, and since the nemesis of the Lefturd press is the VWRC blogs, (the left in general has not proven to be an effective offset for whatever reason. Probably because, like Err America, hate as a marketable commodity peters out pretty fast), are we witnessing the foothills of the next “BDS” left-wing paranoidal mountain? (blog derangement syndrome)
- Apparently the Donkeys have finally figured out that Bush isn’t running this time, so maybe they needs them a new monster.
Pingback by Blogging yourself to death - Are you in danger? « rjjago.wordpress.com on 4/5 @ 9:54 pm #
[...] Protein Wisdom picks it up here: 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. [...]
Comment by Jim in KC on 4/5 @ 10:16 pm #
So the count appears to be two. A grim milestone?
Comment by SarahW on 4/5 @ 10:22 pm #
Those gift baskets can’t be helping.
Comment by Karl on 4/5 @ 10:25 pm #
But I would rather die of those gift baskets.
Comment by Robert Stacy McCain on 4/5 @ 10:54 pm #
Comrades! We must combat this greedy exploitation of the bloggetariat! Rise up, toilers of Internets! Strike down your bourgeois oppressors!
Comment by daleyrocks on 4/5 @ 11:01 pm #
You also had that angry black dude die last year. No undiscovered lifestyle or health issues there. A heart attack waiting to happen.
Comment by Little Miss Attila on 4/5 @ 11:47 pm #
Well, as I understand it, people who blog die. But people who do not blog . . . they’re immortal?
Is that like fountain-of-youth immortal, or more like vampire-undead immortal? I need these details before I’ll consider giving up an essential part of my healthy lifestyle.
Comment by MC on 4/6 @ 3:33 am #
I think it’s true.
Comment by Ghost of MC on 4/6 @ 3:33 am #
Cripes! Wha’ happened?
Trackback by Outside The Beltway | OTB on 4/6 @ 6:09 am #
Death by Blogging
Today’s NYT features a rather bizarre feature entitled, “In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop.”
A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the …
Pingback by Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup » Pirate’s Cove — Global Warming Rules! on 4/6 @ 8:16 am #
[...] at protein wisdom on the Grey Ladies “bloggers are gonna die!” [...]
Comment by Rob Crawford on 4/6 @ 8:29 am #
The NYT — didn’t they have a “journalist” who would walk down to a neighborhood bar, throw down some drinks, then come back and file a report complete with quotes from people who, frankly, don’t exist?
Actually, folks, the NYT isn’t trying to say blogging’s unhealthy. They’re saying bloggers are fat. In other words, bloggers offend the modern liberal aesthetics, and thus can safely be ignored. It’s a class marker, like NASCAR.
Comment by Pablo on 4/6 @ 8:32 am #
So, let me get this straight: Really successful people work long hours at their vocation and often find that other areas of their lives suffer for the time spent in career oriented pursuits? And this creates stress?
You don’t say.
Trackback by Don Singleton on 4/6 @ 11:37 am #
Writers Blog Till They Drop
But would it be less stressful than in their homes, with their families, and where they can eat when they want, sleep when they are tired, don’t have to commute to work, etc.
Comment by ushie on 4/6 @ 11:47 am #
Karl, you need a “Killed by Blogging” t-shirt.
Comment by Little Miss Attila on 4/6 @ 12:15 pm #
Don’t update your blog; you’ll KILL YOURSELF!
Comment by twolaneflash on 4/6 @ 12:35 pm #
History reports that buggy whip makers found themselves with an inordinate amount of free time to discuss the health effects suffered by Henry Ford’s employees. CNN is still searching the nation to find the remaining whip-craftsman for comment; oops, job got outsourced.
Comment by twolaneflash on 4/6 @ 1:05 pm #
Bloggers, rebuild America’s manufacturing capacity: buy a buggy whip and whip yourselves into shape! It’ll be good for you. It’ll be good for America. The cows? Not so much.
Raising a dead industry is just so unrewarding. Let the MSM continue to their natural, self-inflicted irrelevance. Truth is still the best commodity to sell in a free market reporting system. The future for the citizen truth-purveyor is bright. The grips of the few are lost to the reach of the masses. The sources for acquiring documentation of events and ideas is now in the hands of millions, who have open channels of distribution, ever more portable and excellent. The world is better off without the news being solely delivered by CNN, CBS, Al-jihad, or any of the other anti-America, freedom-hating deep-pocket organizations. For the price of going to the public library, i can tell the world that AP, Reuters, and their ilk are toxic to The Republic, and it is the duty of the Keyboard Patriots to innoculate their fellow Americans with the anti-venom, one word of Truth after another. What a country! GBA.
Comment by Mikey NTH on 4/6 @ 1:29 pm #
‘Bloggers killed the journalist star,
Bloggers killed the journalist star,…’
Comment by Swen Swenson on 4/6 @ 1:45 pm #
Isn’t the moral of this story that jumping to conclusions isn’t very good exercise?
Comment by Mikey NTH on 4/6 @ 2:16 pm #
“In my mind and in my car,
We can’t edit we’ve gone too far,
pixels came and broke your heart,
Oh uh oh oh, Oh uh oh oh…”
Pingback by Buggles! | Cold Fury on 4/6 @ 5:43 pm #
[...] I found over at PW got me thinkin’ (God help you [...]
Pingback by Tubular [Dan Collins] on 4/6 @ 5:47 pm #
[...] internet? Will that make bloggers die even younger? Posted by Dan Collins @ 5:42 pm | Trackback Share [...]
Pingback by Is Blogging a killer App » Delusions of Adequacy on 4/8 @ 9:12 pm #
[...] was widely reported that two men died allegedly because of blogging. An except of the story from the NYT (hat tip via Protein Wisdom and [...]
Pingback by Is Blogging a Killer App? « Delusions of Adequacy on 4/8 @ 9:14 pm #
[...] was widely reported that two men died allegedly because of blogging. An except of the story from the NYT (hat tip via Protein Wisdom and [...]
Trackback by subjects on 4/29 @ 2:52 pm #
subjects
Some hotels don’t conforms the descriptions, that is why real reviews of people who stayed there are very useful.
Comment by blspxk hcpgwzy on 6/17 @ 11:11 am #
zwtderjb kuqz fugijcwea ptqich zldiung zgwei tbdvy
Trackback by Black people fucking. on 8/6 @ 4:30 pm #
People fucking vids….
People fucking. Free pictures of people fucking….
Comment by anti snoring on 2/19 @ 6:16 am #
Thanks for such a useful post about sleep apena due to snoring. I am also suffering from such problem due to my brother. help me.
Thanks