Blodget Finds Former Newspaper Employee Who Confirms Laziness

Business Insider's editor-in-chief and CEO Henry Blodget's quest to prove newspaper staffs are too lazy to adapt to the digital world just got an interesting show of support from someone who used to work in the newspaper world. According to Blodget, an unnamed former newspaper journalist wrote to BI, saying "I'm convinced 80 to 90 percent of the people in newsrooms don't have a clue what hard work is (caveat, of course, I've known a few very hard working journalists). And those people get offended if you suggest they're not working hard. They just don't understand what hard work really is." The writer details how he used to get in trouble with editors because he suggested fellow employees should work harder. Now he says he runs a "profitable online news business" and works 15 to 17 hours a day. So take that lazy newspaper reporters! The unknown writer left with one last complaint he often heard coming out of newspaper journalists' mouths. This complaint could have come out of any mid-level employee in any field and is definitely prevalent in the journalism world as well. "On the other side - for the non-entrepreneur, you'll also hear from journalists that they don't want to put in extra hours for The Man without being paid. Why should they help some publicly traded company? They don't understand - like employees of digital companies seem to understand - that you're not just helping The Man, you're helping yourself and you're making a contribution and you're building something better." Still, there's got be a middle ground between how Blodget perceives newspapers' staffs and newspapers' staffs' perception of themselves. At least I hope so, for newspapers' sake. Photo credit: Ben Sutherland

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Blodget Finds Former Newspaper Employee Who Confirms Laziness

Ryan Derousseau

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Ryan Derousseau