{"id":17673,"date":"2009-07-01T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-01T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2009\/07\/01\/the-new-york-times-says-im-doing-it-all-wrong-but-maybe-thats-for-the-better\/"},"modified":"2009-07-01T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-01T10:00:00","slug":"the-new-york-times-says-im-doing-it-all-wrong-but-maybe-thats-for-the-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20090701-00\/?p=17673","title":{"rendered":"The New York Times says I'm doing it all wrong, but maybe that's for the better"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some time ago, The New York Times<\/i> ran a story titled In Web World of 24\/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop<\/i><\/a>, which mentions that “those on the lower rungs of the business can earn as little as $10 a post.”\n Dude, if that’s what people on the lower rungs earn, then I’m below ground level! (Nevermind that just the previous month, an article in The New York Times<\/i> wrote about the business of blogging: Don’t expect to get rich<\/a>.)\n Then again, I probably shouldn’t complain, seeing as what most people took away from the article was that blogging kills<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Slate<\/i>‘s Timothy Noah<\/a> noted in his article Death by Blogging<\/i><\/a> that the New York Times<\/i> article employs a magic phrase which, once it appears, is a signal to the reader that the subject matter of the story is completely made up: <\/p>\n

Give Richtel credit for admitting high up in the story that what follows is purest fancy. Newspaper reporters call these caveat-rich passages “to-be-sure grafs.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The “to-be-sure” paragraph appears as paragraph number six: <\/p>\n

To be sure<\/u>, there is no official diagnosis<\/u> of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not<\/u> qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty<\/u> that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. But<\/u>… <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It opens with the magic phrase that says “What you are reading in the remainder of this article is complete fantasy,” then adds a few more statements saying that “None of what this article says is true.” And then, as if to say, “Let’s not let facts get in the way of a good story,” it immediately resumes the fabrication with a “But…” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some time ago, The New York Times ran a story titled In Web World of 24\/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop, which mentions that “those on the lower rungs of the business can earn as little as $10 a post.” Dude, if that’s what people on the lower rungs earn, then I’m below ground […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[103],"class_list":["post-17673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-non-computer"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

Some time ago, The New York Times ran a story titled In Web World of 24\/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop, which mentions that “those on the lower rungs of the business can earn as little as $10 a post.” Dude, if that’s what people on the lower rungs earn, then I’m below ground […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}