In 24/7 Web world, some writers blog till they drop

SAN FRANCISCO — 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.

Growing numbers of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, 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.

The bloggers can work elsewhere, and they profess a love of the nonstop action and perhaps the chance to create a global media outlet without a major upfront investment. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the past few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly.

Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., a funeral was held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another technology blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.

Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.

There is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. But friends and family of the deceased, and fellow information workers, said those deaths have them thinking about the dangers of their work style.

The pressure even gets to those who work for themselves — and are being well-compensated.

"I haven't died yet," said Michael Arrington, founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a popular technology blog. The site has brought in millions of dollars in advertising revenue, but there has been a hefty cost.

Arrington said he has gained 30 pounds in the past three years, developed a severe sleeping disorder and turned his home into an office for him and four employees. "At some point, I'll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen.

"This is not sustainable."

It is unclear how many people blog for pay, but there are surely several thousand, maybe tens of thousands.

The emergence of this class of information worker has paralleled the development of the online economy. Publishing has expanded to the Internet, and advertising has followed.

Even at established companies, the Internet has changed the nature of work, allowing people to set up virtual offices and work from anywhere at any time. That flexibility has a downside, in that workers are always a click away from the burdens of the office. For obsessive information workers, that can mean never leaving the job.

Demand for more work

Blogging has been lucrative for some, but those on the lower rungs of the business can earn as little as $10 a post, and in some cases are paid on a sliding bonus scale that rewards success with a demand for more work.

There are growing numbers reporting on and reflecting about sports, politics, business, celebrities and every other conceivable niche. Some write for fun, but thousands write for Web publishers — as employees or as contractors — or have started online-media outlets with profit in mind.

One of the most competitive categories is blogs about technology developments and news. They are in a 24-hour competition to break company news, reveal products and expose corporate gaffes.

To the victor go the ego points, and, potentially, the advertising. Bloggers for such sites are often paid for each post, though some are paid based on how many people read their material. They build that audience through scoops or volume or both.

Some sites, such as those owned by Gawker Media, give bloggers retainers and then bonuses for hitting benchmarks, such as if the pages they write are viewed 100,000 times a month. Then the goal is raised, like a sales commission: Write more, earn more.

Bloggers at some of the bigger sites said most writers earn about $30,000 a year starting out, and some can make up to $70,000. A tireless few bloggers reach six figures, and some entrepreneurs have built mini-empires on the Web that are generating hundreds of thousands of dollars a month.

Others trying to turn blogging into a career said they can end up with just $1,000 a month.

Speed can be of the essence. 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.

"There's no time ever — including when you're sleeping — when you're not worried about missing a story," Arrington said.

"Wouldn't it be great if we said no blogger or journalist could write a story between 8 p.m. Pacific Time and dawn? Then we could all take a break," he added. "But that's never going to happen."

Exhausting work

All that competition puts a premium on staying awake. Matt Buchanan, 22, is the right man for the job. He works for Gizmodo, a popular Gawker Media site that publishes news about gadgets, and is paid per reader. Buchanan lives in a small apartment in Brooklyn, where his bedroom doubles as his office.

He said he sleeps about five hours a night and often does not have time to eat proper meals. But he does stay fueled by regularly consuming a protein supplement mixed into coffee.

Make no mistake: Buchanan, a recent graduate of New York University, loves his job. He said he gets paid to write (he will not say how much) while interacting with readers in a global conversation about the latest and greatest products.

"The fact I have a few thousand people a day reading what I write; that's kind of cool," he said. And, yes, it is exhausting. Sometimes, he said, "I just want to lie down."

Sometimes he does rest, inadvertently, falling asleep at the computer.

"If I don't hear from him, I'll think: Matt's passed out again," said Brian Lam, the editor of Gizmodo. "It's happened four or five times."

Lam, who as a manager has a substantially larger income, works harder. He is known to pull all-nighters at his own home office in San Francisco, hours spent trying to keep his site organized and competitive. He said he was well-equipped for the torture; he used to be a Thai-style boxer.

"I've got a background getting punched in the face," he said. "That's why I'm good at this job."

Lam said he has worried his blogging employees might be burning out, and he urges them to take breaks, even vacations. But he said they face tremendous pressure: external, internal and financial.

He said the evolution of the "pay-per-click" economy has put the emphasis on reader traffic and financial return, not journalism.

Pressure was severe

In the case of Shaw, it is not clear what role stress played in his death. Ellen Green, who had been dating him for 13 months, said the pressure, though self-imposed, was severe.

She said she and Shaw had been talking a lot about how he could create a healthier lifestyle, particularly after the death of his friend, Orchant.

"The blogger community is looking at this and saying: 'Oh no, it happened so fast to two really vital people in the field,' " she said. They are wondering, "What does that have to do with me?"

Shaw did not die at his desk. He died in a hotel in San Jose, Calif., where he had flown to cover a technology conference.

He had written a last e-mail dispatch to his editor at ZDNet: "Have come down with something. Resting now posts to resume later today or tomorrow."