I worked for MaltaToday as their court reporter for exactly 10 years, 2 months, and 24 days. I walked away from that role two days ago.
I have changed a lot in that time. My understanding of what happens behind the scenes in the legal, legislative and news spheres has grown. My patience and naive empathy for the excessively verbose, the vain and the selfish schemers is all but gone.
Much, too, has remained the same. The truth and the basics tenets of how to be a decent human never change. But unfortunately, neither does greed and the lusts for power and control, which made being constantly immersed in the worst aspects of human nature rather exhausting, for me at least.
In my decade in the news business, I’ve been privileged to have had some truly amazing opportunities and wonderful experiences. I have worked with many tremendously talented and generous human beings and have also seen some of mankind’s absolute worst specimens. I would like to think that I have tripped up a shyster or two along the way, too.
If you happen to be one of those talented and generous beings, know that I am tremendously grateful for you being there when it mattered.
For every exciting moment there have also been countless hours of tedium, innumerable heated arguments, errors of judgement, a few really quite hairy situations and more frustration than you can shake a stick at. It is what it is and I’m at peace with it.
I now have a collection of old press cards that I can’t bring myself to throw away
What, as a news consumer/reader, you need to be told- and to understand - is that the news industry is in a much weaker position than it was ten years ago, and might just disappear in the forms in which we know it by the next ten. Facebook, Instagram, X, the advent of Artificial Intelligence and, I’m sure, the unreported underhanded interests of wealthy individuals, large corporations, holders of powerful office and other shady folk have all put paid to that.
As things stand today, there is precious little money to be made in keeping the public informed about what powerful people are doing, especially if they’re doing the wrong thing. Over the past decade, we have seen the press- the much-vaunted “fourth pillar of democracy”- be reduced from setting the agenda as a force that could, and should, hold power to account, to scrambling for overloaded and distracted ears and eyeballs just to survive. In some aspects, it has almost become mere background noise, partly due to corporate strategies but also as a result of industrial-scale disinformation operations.
You have to understand that news gatherers and publishers are now in direct competition with, basically, every smartphone owner.
We find ourselves in a hellscape where what you’re saying doesn’t matter as much as how slickly-produced your 3 minute video shorts are. Where reason and facts are drowned out by the algorithmically-amplified rabble of loud and dishonest voices, telling you to squabble over semantics and accept strawman arguments, helping the rich, powerful and the corrupt to distract the public with endless smokescreens and panem et circenses.
What a time to be alive!
In this aspect, the news industry is still scratching its head, trying to fight a wildfire that it hasn’t quite figured out yet, armed with just a few dozen buckets of water. This is happening in spite of the herculean efforts and sacrifices of an ever-reducing pool of talented and dedicated journalists, editors and news outlets.
In truth, sometimes it feels like it’s happening to spite them.
Which brings me neatly back to my departure. Nobody with any integrity is in the news industry for the money, so if you’re still in after the thrill of the first three years has subsided, you’re probably doing it for the greater good.
So when in both the macro and the micro aspects, you start realising that the positive impact of your work is rapidly diminishing, it stops being rewarding and starts to be…well, a bit depressing, really.
Mental health is as important as it is fragile and avoiding irreparable damage to my psyche was also definitely one of the factors in my choice to step away from the industry. There are other reasons too, of course, but it all boils down to the question: is the reward still commensurate to the effort? In my case it no longer was.
I am now moving into another line of work, one that will hopefully still go some way to impede the bad guys. For now, questions about where I’m going to be working next will be met with the stock nonsense response: “making ravioli.” If you need to know, you will, and if you’re weirdly obsessed with finding out, it shouldn't be too difficult, but I’m not one to satisfy idle curiosity or entertain malicious questions.
So that’s a wrap on my journalism career. Time for someone else, possibly younger, more energetic and less burnt out, to step up and take over, ‘clamp their jaws on the ills plaguing society,’ if you will.
If that someone is you, I am willing you with every fiber of my being to go forth and visit havoc and bedlam upon the bad guys. Fuck them up good and proper, and do it before they figure out how to undermine you, like they did the rest of us. We are counting on you.
Good luck. Take no prisoners, but don’t forget to take care of yourself too.
