Probably my biggest advantage is that I’ve always been able to write the finished copy the first time, from college term papers to blogging; it’s rare for me to have to do much revision (other than spell-checking, since my speling is absolutely lousy). Falling asleep at the computer isn’t a problem for me.

The bread and butter of most Gawker sites is a rapid stream of punchy commentary about news as it breaks through other outlets.

That kind of blogging can be very time consuming. I did filter blogging for AlterNet’s PEEK on Thursdays, so I can attest. The PEEK is a “best of” the liberal blogs. Maybe you only write 600 original words per day, but you spend an incredible amount of time keeping your finger on the pulse. And coming up with witty headlines, etc.

These filter bloggers have to keep up with a huge volume of media and churn out posts at regular intervals throughout the day. They probably scan 20 or 30 news items for every item they actually post. It’s hard to get any other revenue-generating work done with this kind of divided attention.

Recently, Gawker changed its pay scheme to reward longer posts with more in-depth reporting–rewarding contributors by the number of clickthroughs to their story, as opposed to the number of posts, although they still have to meet a monthly post quota. I don’t know how these writers are going to fit in additional reporting. The real problem, I suspect, was that folks would churn out quickie posts to meet their quota and punch.

Now, Gawker’s gone deeper into the piecework model so that the bloggers will be tied to the screens all day, competing against each other for clickthroughs from the homepage, searching for that perfect item that will make them money.

http://xkcd.com/369/

I watched something similar happen in the monthly-magazine business through the emergence of fedex, then fax, then email. With each new way of getting stuff back and forth between writer and editor, deadlines shifted, the expected time for turning something around shortened, the number of iterations increased, the pressure went up, and the visible quality did not improve, to put it mildly.

It’s not so much computers that we’ve been adapting ourselves to as corporations — things with the rights of people, but no need to sleep, eat or go to the bathroom. And ever-more-pervasive communications technologies have done it. (Does anyone remember when having the latest beeper/phone/blackberry/whatever was considered a sign of status rather than a sign of 24-hour peonage?)

Only the tiniest minority of people are ever actually able to retire. Even in the so-called developed world.

KAROSHI

But during the first three postwar decades no one paid any special attention to the larger than usual number of men in their 40s and 50s who died of brain and heart ailments, most often from acute cardiac insufficiency and subarachnoid hemorrhage.

It was not until the latter part of the 1980s, when several high-ranking business executives who were still in their prime years suddenly died without any previous sign of illness, that the news media began picking up on what appeared to be a new phenomenon.

This new phenomenon was quickly labeled karoshi (kah-roe-she), or “death from overwork”, and once it had a name and its symptoms were broadcast far and wide, it just as quickly became obvious that Japan was experiencing a virtual epidemic.

And there is this:

A Japanese court has ruled that overwork pushed a 28-year-old Fujitsu software developer to commit suicide.

The worker killed himself in a company-supplied dormitory in March 2002 shortly after completing a project, according to local news reports that quoted a lawyer for his family. In January of 2002 he was diagnosed with depression because of pressure at work but the following month he worked 159 hours of overtime, the reports said.

And, to round things off, from the Wikipedia:

The French-German TV Channel arte showed a documentary called “Alt in Japan” (Old in Japan) on 6 November 2006 dealing with old age workers in Japan. Many will be prepared to work unpaid overtime to an extreme extent particularly as their young co-workers will often quit when a job is too strenuous. In some cases it has been proven that firms were aware of the poor health of an employee. Some children will regularly pick their parents up from work to prevent them from working themselves to death.

Filial piety

Almost brings a tear to your eye, the way adversity brings in traditional Asian values………….

KAROSHI

But during the first three postwar decades no one paid any special attention to the larger than usual number of men in their 40s and 50s who died of brain and heart ailments, most often from acute cardiac insufficiency and subarachnoid hemorrhage.

It was not until the latter part of the 1980s, when several high-ranking business executives who were still in their prime years suddenly died without any previous sign of illness, that the news media began picking up on what appeared to be a new phenomenon.

This new phenomenon was quickly labeled karoshi (kah-roe-she), or “death from overwork”, and once it had a name and its symptoms were broadcast far and wide, it just as quickly became obvious that Japan was experiencing a virtual epidemic.

And there is this:

A Japanese court has ruled that overwork pushed a 28-year-old Fujitsu software developer to commit suicide.

The worker killed himself in a company-supplied dormitory in March 2002 shortly after completing a project, according to local news reports that quoted a lawyer for his family. In January of 2002 he was diagnosed with depression because of pressure at work but the following month he worked 159 hours of overtime, the reports said.

And, to round things off, from the Wikipedia:

The French-German TV Channel arte showed a documentary called “Alt in Japan” (Old in Japan) on 6 November 2006 dealing with old age workers in Japan. Many will be prepared to work unpaid overtime to an extreme extent particularly as their young co-workers will often quit when a job is too strenuous. In some cases it has been proven that firms were aware of the poor health of an employee. Some children will regularly pick their parents up from work to prevent them from working themselves to death.

Filial piety

Almost brings a tear to your eye, the way adversity brings in traditional Asian values………….