The New York Times has a rather gloomy piece on how bloggers are dropping dead like flies, apparently overcome by the strains of the 24/7 global internet culture.

Personally, I’ve not known a blogger who has slumped lifeless over a keyboard (touch wood). I imagine people pass away at inconvenient moments in many professions. Blogging and writing from home must have its share of dicky tickers like any other walk of life.

However, the NYT has chapter and verse :

Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech 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.

From these few examples you would have to subtract the number of deaths and heart attacks in the general population to arrive at a guesstimate of internet publishing’s real rate of attrition.

No doubt there are serious stresses and strains working in the new online environment. However, a word of caution. Anyone who has worked for newspapers to tight daily deadlines will recognize the same pressures and symptoms. Journalists are not notorious for their alcohol consumption for nothing.

And try slaving in a factory, repetitively doing the same tasks thousands of times a day. Or surviving the water-cooler politics of office life. Worse, the back-breaking toil of farm work. There are no easy options in “the world of work”.

Methinks the problem lies, as ever, with meetings, travel, networking and other inconsequentials of the wired-up sector. Networking for the internetizen means Twittering and Tweeting incoherently to hundreds, maybe thousands, of “followers”, mostly without a shred of benefit to the bottom line. Email is another source of stress and should be stamped on ruthlessly, as Michael Arrington of TechCrunch wrote a day or two ago.

The Times has this quote from him, “‘I haven’t died yet,’ said Michael Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a popular technology blog. ‘At some point, I’ll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen. This is not sustainable,’ he said.”

Syntagma’s advice : drop the Tweets, do the paid work efficiently — a three-hour morning should suffice — then get out of the house on a long Photowalk, or maybe to the golf course or coffee shop (preferably without a Hotspot), and forget about the Labours of Hercules. He was a mythical character and is not one to emulate.

This morning I received a couple of comments on two old posts dating back to October 2005 and July 2006. Both posts have been popular for comments and email conversations. Neither is on topic — which are, Tech, Media, Publishing — and would fall into the very ample category of self-indulgence.

The first is, Hey, I’m a Viking, which tells how I discovered that I’m … erm … a Viking. It seems I have the genetic configuration called Baron Dupuytren’s disease, or Viking Finger. Here’s a snippet :

“This weekend I discovered I’m a Viking. … Yes, I’m one of those horn-headed, axe-wielding types who terrorized Europe for centuries. Before you run for cover, I’m not about to go on a spreadeagling spree or demand you pay me Danegeld — although that might not be a bad idea.

“I realized I’ve got Viking blood — as many in the British Isles have — because of a minor medical condition which affects the small finger tendon in the palm of a hand. This progressive condition pulls the small finger gradually across the palm, giving a rather gnarled, even romantic, impression to the onlooker. The figure of Captain Hook springs to mind. ”

The second, is about an obscure Cornish author called Crosbie Garstin, now utterly forgotten, even in Cornwall. Yet, he wrote a major Hollywood film, China Seas (1935), which starred Clark Gable, plus a memorable trilogy about the Penhales family. Here’s a taster :

“Crosbie Garstin is best known for his trilogy of novels about the Penhales family, published before the last war by Heinemann. The Owls’ House, High Noon and The West Wind are all cracking adventures set in Cornwall and on the high seas in the days of sail. China Seas, his last book, continued the genre, and was made into a Hollywood film starring Clark Gable. Garstin was an interesting character, a true adventurer and traveller. He served during the first world war in King Edward’s Horse and was commissioned on the battlefield in 1915.”

It always intrigues me why some posts attract comments long after they were published. Clearly, these two contain specific keywords that are regularly searched for on Google and other engines. Syntagma is number 1 on Google for both “crosbie garstin” and “viking finger”.

So doctors searching for medical information on Baron Dupuytren’s disease will land on our silly post. Let’s hope they don’t kill anyone with an axe.

Darren Rowse of Problogger shows us around his new office in Melbourne on video and invites everyone to display their own. Here’s a couple of pics of Syntagma Media’s current office :

The working part of the Syntagma office

The meeting zone

As you can see it’s a bit cramped, even for two people working. The meeting area is cozy, to put it mildly. We really need a two-room office.

However, we are moving house and office later this year, so it’s a work in progress.

Last Christmas I wrote a post with 10 predictions for blogs and blog networks over the coming year. It was meant to be humorous, so not many came true.

This season it would be difficult to do the same as most of the buzz has disappeared. Top bloggers have gone pro, and startup networks have become serious and less inclined to gossip — except incomprehensibly on Twitter, where it’s like listening to one side of a telephone conversation spoken in code. So I’m not going to do ten predictions this year.

2007 has been the year of unblogging. Blogging about blogging has hit the deadpool. The tedium just turned us off in the end, as it always does.

That’s good. When the medium becomes the message something is out of kilter. To say that A is B is gobbledigook since, if true, there would be no need for B. Now the message is clearly the message and we can all get back to simple basics, i.e. content, and use weblog software for what it was meant to be, an easy way to publish our thoughts online without giving an interminable running commentary.

Has that taken some steam out of the blogosphere? You bet it has. Google spotted this and is currently downgrading all but the very best examples of the blogging art. Money will be much tighter until the next boom, which may be some years away.

Advertisers too are reining in their drive into blogs, converting big downpayments into PayPerClick models. Who can blame them? Goldrushes never last.

So I’m going to make one prediction for 2008. It will be much harder financially for everyone, and only the best will survive. The credit crunch will squeeze out those who haven’t put something by for the hard times, and leave the dabblers stranded.

It’s going to be a long, hard haul, but hey, that’s where the fun is, isn’t it?

Chins up and mind how you grow.