Is Blogging Dangerous To Your Health? (Updated)

That is what the New York Times is implying in their story about Om Malik's blog GigaOm:

Some Brand-Name Bloggers Say Stress of Posting Is a Hazard to Their Health

Om Malik’s blog, GigaOm, regularly breaks news about the technology industry. Last week, the journalist turned blogger broke a big story about himself. Mr. Malik, 41, blogged that he had suffered a heart attack on Dec. 28.

“I was able to walk into the hospital for treatment that night and have been recovering here ever since,” Mr. Malik wrote. “With the support of my family and my team, I am on the road to a full recovery. I am going to be O.K.”

His heart attack — and his blogging about it — raises the issue of what happens when a blogger becomes a name brand.

“The trouble with a personal brand is, you’re yoked to a machine,” said Paul Kedrosky, a friend of Mr. Malik’s who runs the Infectious Greed blog. “You feel huge pressure to not just do a lot, but to do a lot with your name on it. You have pressure to not just be the C.E.O., but at the same time to write, and to do it all on a shoestring. Put it all together, and it’s a recipe for stress through the roof.”

I suppose that not being a "Name Brand" relieves me of the kind of pressure that Malik has--my biggest pressure is being asked by my wife why I'm still up at 2am. I know full well that as a small blog, any pressure I feel is self-generated, and not caused by the expectations of people who read my blog. I know that I can walk away from blogging any time I want to...Right after my next post.

Besides, a few paragraphs later, almost as an afterthought, the article notes:

Paul Walborsky, the chief operating officer for Mr. Malik’s company, Giga Omni Media, played down stress as a factor in Mr. Malik’s health. He noted Mr. Malik’s incessant smoking of cigars and cigarettes was a more likely cause.

Regardless of the cause, we wish Mr. Malik a quick recovery.

UPDATE: It's 2 months later and this issue is being raised again--courtesy of The New York Times--and John Podhoretz puts it all into perspective:

The fact that bloggers find themselves unable to stop blogging day and night really has less to do with the commercial demands of the medium than it does to the heightened experience of life lived on the Internet. Because it is possible to write a blog item and have it appear instantaneously, many bloggers presume that an item is fresh only to the extent that it conceived, fleshed out, and posted — and that no one will find their blogs of value unless they are sitting at their desks constantly, always at the ready to file. This is not only a source of stress, but a source of fun. It’s fun to be able to be among the first people on earth to issue forth a comment about a news event. People are doing this for a living not because they can’t find something else to do, but because there is nothing else they would rather do. The sniveling about it is repugnant.

Instapundit has a number of links to interesting reactions.

Technorati Tag: Blogging.