Well, like I said: the anecdotes are fine. I don't necessarily have a problem with anecdotes. One of my favorite genres is the oral history, in which a historian sits with a bunch of people and just writes down their anecdotes. (The Box: An Oral History of Television is really good, but let's not forget Founders At Work, which is essentially in the same genre.) You can learn quite a lot by just listening to people talk about their lives and their professions. I certainly agree that it's good to know that quite a few lawyers are bored stiff, and that quite a few doctors hate practicing medicine in our broken health-care system.

What I dislike is this style of journalism where the storyteller tries to tart up the anecdotes with meaningless numbers in an attempt to make them seem more significant. Meaningful numbers would be nice; meaningless numbers just distract you and dilute the directness and frankness of the stories.

Reading a story like this is like having a conversation with a day trader: they are anxious to impress you with their detailed knowledge of the up-and-down movements of randomly-walking lines on charts, but they barely know what their favorite company's product is or who its customers are.