'Death by Blogging' Story Was Pure Hooey

The relentlessly self-analytical blogosphere had a field day with the recent New York Times story on bloggers allegedly writing themselves to death. But as the Internet exploded with reaction to the paper's claims, a Slate critic points out that the dire trend story was backed up by the thinnest tissue of circumstance. "Let's not kid ourselves that any white-collar work ranks high among dangerous professions," sniffs Timothy Noah in Slate.

The Times piece named only two bloggers who died, and the journalist prefaced the story with a "caveat-rich" disclaimer that he had no evidence that work-related stress caused either demise. Workers are 10 times more likely to die doing construction than blogging, which should give the Times reporter "some sense of proportion."