A real, Honest-To-God, New York Times Headline for Sunday April 6th:
In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop
The article claims pro blogging is akin to a sweatshop.
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.
The whole article reads like a Dateline: NBC piece gone wrong.
Jack Schofield over at The Guardian did a great little piece on it, but Marc Andreessen probably made the best point:
Reworded for brevity:
Blogging Causes Death
He also listed the following possible headlines for future NYT articles:
Blogging Causes Herpes
Bloggers Shorter than Normal People
Want To Contract Malaria? Try Blogging
Bloggers Have Bad Breath
Leprosy and Blogging May Be Connected
Hitler Probably Blogged
Now Bloggers Aren’t Even Wearing Pajamas
Blogging Fad Almost Over
Hitler Probably Blogged is probably my favorite.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure being obligated to blog on a daily or sometimes hourly basis just to pay the rent can be stressful. But to compare blogging to a virtual sweatshop is a little extreme. I bet there are plenty of exhausted little six year olds, over in some third world country, who would love to stop sewing the Nike logo onto sneakers and start typing on a keyboard about Barack Obama’s chances at making it to the White House.
The whole thing is just laughable and I hope to hell it was intended as a tongue-in-cheek story. Because if it wasn’t, then the credibility of that news organization just took a hit.
Then again, it is The New York Times.
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On a side note, I’m aware I’ve been blogging quite a bit lately. I’m trying to make this a semi-daily blog and I’m sure I’ll fall into a decent algorithm of posting.
For the time being, I’m a blogging fool and I’m sorry for flooding your RSS feeds.
I swear I’ll stop before I drop.
Ramblings and Musings 
The silly thing is that almost no one who blogs professionally does it at a time where they can’t make ends meat. All the pro bloggers I follow or know decided to blog full time and quit their day jobs after they started making good enough money. The NYT is full of it.
I get paid to blog. And do other things, but I do blog. And I make decent money. So nanny nanny boo boo NYT.
Trish:
The New York Times used to stand for something. It used to be a quality paper with a lot of cred. But in recent years, it’s just become a joke.
Ali:
Do you feel you’re being put to work in a virtual sweatshop?