
America's Newest Profession - robg
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB124026415808636575-IMyQjAxMDI5NDIwMTIyNjE0Wj.html#print/Mode
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jcromartie
" _Already more Americans are making their primary income from posting their
opinions than Americans working as computer programmers ..._ "

There is absolutely no way that this is true. They say that "452,000 [use
blogging] as their primary source of income." I would be very surprised to
find less than half a million programers are working in the US.

~~~
nostrademons
It's false, but it's not off by much. As of 2002, there were 562,700
programmers in the U.S:

<http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/43888.html>

2002 was the last year they had full data for the series ID given there (I
checked at the Bureau of Labor Statisics), but it had been stable for a few
years.

I wouldn't be surprised if blogging crosses over within the next couple years.
It's a very labor-intensive profession, and as the article notes, many people
will pay for a friendly opinion.

~~~
dreish
I'm not sure how a source from 2002 proves false a citation of a source from
2007.

Edit: Look, whoever keeps downvoting this, would you PLEASE read the sources?
Is that too much to ask? See my other comment below, explaining how the
article arrived at its number, and why it doesn't sound right.

It's really disappointing to see HN devolve into such sloppy thinking.

~~~
dreish
(Also, sorry to complain about getting downvoted.)

------
philwelch
I had a friend once who was a professional blogger, though she lived in Costa
Rica to reduce her cost of living and made most of her revenue through
affiliate links to online casinos before the US started cracking down on
gambling. Now that there's been a crackdown, blogging is less fun to her.
She's become addicted to Twitter and found other work.

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quoderat
I am skeptical of the numbers in this article. I'd like to see the data that's
backing this up, and how it's gathered.

~~~
dreish
The Bureau of Labor Statistics does pretty good work compiling statistics, but
that isn't a guarantee that journalists will do a good job of reading them.

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alanthonyc
The dismissive tone of the article makes me think that the writer is just
another member of an anointed establishment (newspapermen in this case) that
feels threatened by a new paradim made possible by new technology.

"Journalist" and "blogger" are not mutually exclusice terms. A journalist is
one who reports the news, a blog is merely the medium.w

~~~
jimbokun
What part was dismissive? I didn't get that sense at all. If anything, he
seemed to be acknowledging that blogging is rapidly eclipsing his profession.

It is true that a journalist can blog his stories, but I doubt that a
significant amount of blogging is original reporting. The vast majority is
probably opinion or analysis of one sort or another.

~~~
alanthonyc
My initial read was a quick one on my phone, so I went back to make sure I
wasn't wrong....

"This could make us the most noisily opinionated nation on earth."

\- Just a noisy opinion, in my opinion.

"All this fits with the trend toward Opinion TV. Less and less of our
information flow is devoted to gathering facts, and more and more is going
toward popularizing opinion. Twenty-four-hour news channels have been replaced
by 24-hour opinion channels. The chatter is the story."

\- Nice job fitting in another baseless stance around a fact simply to
legitimize said opinion by proximity. Conveniently left unsaid is the fact
that the "twenty-four-hour news channels" he holds up on a pedestal are
themselves 24-hour opinion channels. Have you ever stayed home from work for a
day and watched CNN or Fox News?

"Bloggers make money if their consumers click the ads on their sites. Some
sites even pay writers by the click, which is of course a system that promotes
sensationalism, or doing whatever it takes to get noticed."

\- Again, assigning a label ("sensationalism") to blogs as if it didn't exist
before blogs did. National Enquirer-type rags aside, all the major news
channels before the internet have been perfecting this art for the past couple
of decades.

The author is not presenting an unbiased report of facts. He is presenting his
own viewpoint DISGUISED as a neutral report.

This report, coming from a "reputable" source like the WSJ is a great example
of why the democratization of the publishing business is good for the public.
There may be a lot of fluff out there, as he states, but the good stuff rises
to the top.

~~~
jimbokun
"Have you ever stayed home from work for a day and watched CNN or Fox News?"

I am almost certain these are the opinion channels to which he refers.

------
Xichekolas
Particularly enjoyed this quote:

 _"All this fits with the trend toward Opinion TV. Less and less of our
information flow is devoted to gathering facts, and more and more is going
toward popularizing opinion. Twenty-four-hour news channels have been replaced
by 24-hour opinion channels. The chatter is the story."_

Also, I had no idea that many people considered blogging their primary
profession. I was under the impression it was more like 1000 tops.

~~~
jimbokun
"452,000 of those using blogging as their primary source of income."

Yep, I was surprised to see a number that large for "primary source of
income." I can believe that 20 million people tried blogging one or two posts
then gave up, but half a million people making their living this way is a
significant occupation.

~~~
Xichekolas
Op, debunking: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=572970>

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michael_nielsen
According to the article, 425,000 people use blogging as their primary source
of income.

Let's assume two authors per blog. So you'd expect some of those blogs to have
a Technorati rank of 200,000 or worse. So far as I can see, blogs with that
kind of Technorati rank usually have readers which number in the tens or (at
most) hundreds. Good luck making thousands of dollars per year with that kind
of readership...

------
dschobel
Talk about putting all your eggs in the internet advertising basket. Remember
the last time that market collapsed?

It was not pretty...

------
decavolt
What, was this originally written in 2006 and just posted now? Way to get the
late-breaking scoop buddy.

~~~
slpsys
While the tone is sarcastic and downvoted, I somewhat agree with this poster.
Maybe if this article were written six+ months ago, before the ad market
tanked, this would have been a much more interesting topic.

