My head is spinning, but not because I'm the Editor-in-Chief of this site, clocking mad hours, and spending many a sleepless night. Nay, it's spinning after the dozen or so "rolleyes" I dropped reading Matt Ritchel's "In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop," in today's NY Times. The article is fun, but also a bit of a nipple-twister, leaving you laughing but also in need of punching someone in the face. (Fortunately we learn that our pal Brian Lam, EIC of Gizmodo, is used to being punched in the face, so I'm gonna take him up on the offer next time I see him.) But I digress...

The article's red thread is that blogging is high stress. Okay, scratch that. The article's red thread is that for-profit, news-oriented, break-news-at-all-costs blogging in a startup environment is high stress. Such blogging, as it turns out, is demanding. It takes hard work. Long hours. And, my God, why didn't someone tell me this before I started this company: apparently blogging can kill.

The impetus (or at least the emotional hook) for the NY Times article were two deaths in the blogging community, and one close call: Russell Shaw died at 60 of a heart attack, Marc Orchant died at 50 of a massive coronary, and Om Malik had a close call only a few months ago. Of course, there's no proof blogging had anything to do with any of these everyday events that affect peoples of all race, creed, color, and profession, but... well it's just so hard being a pro-blogger, you see. Bloggers see stress quite unlike airline pilots, soldiers, ER docs, air traffic controllers... you know, the guys that have it easy.

So some pro bloggers are very stressed, it would seem, because they have their noses to the ground constantly sniffing for new stories, and hoping not to get the brown stuff on the tip. Indeed, this is perhaps my biggest complaint with the article's scope: it takes the lifestyles/choices of but a few, and projects them upon "A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, [who] are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment."

Yet these "bloggers" that were interviewed are all guys obsessed with breaking news stories. Ritchel even repeats the untruth that: "If a blogger is beaten by a millisecond, someone else's post on the subject will bring in the audience, the links and the bigger share of the ad revenue." This is not how publishing online really works in this highly-decentralized, aggregation/portal-driven business. It's far, far more complex, especially for sites with large communities around them, like Ars. More obviously, breaking news is not the only thing bloggers, iReporters, or even the "professionals," do.

Consider also the comments of Doc Searls, writing in response to the article: "There is a difference in kind between writing to produce understanding and writing to produce money, even when they overlap. There are matters of purpose to consider, and how one drives (or even corrupts) the other." To this I would add: there is a difference in writing to be quick, and writing for understanding, or some other purpose (like context, analysis, etc).

The most worthwhile comments in the article come paraphrased from Brian Lam, who points out that the "journalism" in all of this is sometimes being lost in favor of pageviews and clicks, thanks to the the turn to quickness. What Ritchel has really cataloged is how some people react to placing themselves in the 24/7 breaking-news cycle, where they are defining value in terms of being first.

Sure, starting and running your own business is not a cake walk, if you mean to do it well. Still, the decisions you make are yours; they are not foisted upon you. Nor are your options so limited in the blogging world that the only way you can hope to contribute, or even make a buck, is by breaking news.

At the end of the day, the article is disappointing because it entertains no alternative voices. No, not everyone in this business thinks that speed trumps all, or that sexy news is the only news worth covering. Some of the best blogs aren't even about "news."

Jon Stokes' parents own a radiator shop down in Louisiana—not even a startup—and they like to say, "the great thing about being a small business owner is that you get to pick which 70 hours a week you want to work."

Adding an Internet connection, PC, keyboard, and mouse to the equation doesn't change the life/work balance we all must find or create.

And surely it's just coincidence, but Jon's dad, having run his small business his whole adult life, had a heart scare only a few months ago. Maybe he should take it down a notch and start a blogging company.