I was going to post something about the now-infamous New York Times “death by blogging” article, but at this point, I think ZDNet’s Larry Dignan really has the last word:
Let’s put a little perspective on this blogging thing. You could be getting shot at in Iraq. You could be a single mom working three jobs to stay afloat (Happy Birthday mom). You could work in a coal mine. You could be in a life and death battle with Leukemia. You could be doing any one of thousands of high-stress jobs. Sure, the Web has a lot of stress but let’s get real: If you’re stressed out over 5,000 RSS feeds chances are good you’d be stressed by any profession you chose.
If anything, the Times article really just highlights a growing problem in America, of which over-stressed bloggers is one symptom: our work-obsessed culture. Back in the late 80s, there were a lot of reports out of Japan that stressed salarymen were dying in droves from karoshi, literally “death from overwork.” At the time, I was working for Business Tokyo, a magazine that covered the trans-Pacific business culture, and I travelled frequently between the U.S. and Japan. And Japanese culture at the time did indeed put such an emphasis on work—and work-related activities such as marathon after-work drinking bouts—that it placed a lot of stress on workers. In some individuals, such stress inevitably lead to heart attacks and other sometimes-fatal ailments, hence karoshi. Fast-forward 20 years, and Americans, on average, now work longer hours than anyone else in the world, including the Japanese. That isn’t a good thing, for bloggers, coal miners or anyone else. Many of Today’s young Japanese workers have rebelled against the salaryman ethos of the past, and have embraced a slacker culture that keeps them ensconced in their parents’ homes and part-time jobs well into their 20s. That may not be the best solution to karoshi, but it beats America’s current workaholic mindset. And if any of those Japanese slackers ever get bored, they can always start blogging. It’s not like it’ll kill them or anything.
(Note: The above is not meant to disrespect the memories of Marc Orchant or Russell Shaw, both of whom were acquaintances of mine from Weblogs Inc. While I know little about the details of their passings, I find it hard to believe that their choice of profession played little more than a peripheral role in their fates. Indeed, my brief conversations with Marc were always extremely positive, and I really think he loved his career. Both Marc and Russell died well before their times, and they should be remembered as individuals—not as harbingers of a hyped up “crisis.”)
