British football writer based in Germany | @Bulinewsdotcom | EFL @FootballLeagueW | Words for @ExpressandStar | Wolves, gigs & Motorsport
Stuttgart, Germany
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Final game before the permanent Germany move. What a load of shite…..
Will miss this place though. Wolves ay we 👍
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Cam retweeted
“Sky Sports Monday Night Draft” where the 19 remaining PL clubs get to choose one of City’s players hosted by… David Jones, Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville
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Absolutely smashed it out the park, what a debut. Album version of Thorn is unreal too 👌
Keo (@KeoBand_) are ready to brighten our day with their debut album, Put A Smile On For Me💛
See all today's new releases 👉officialcharts.com/new-relea…
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Cam retweeted
I'm really looking forward to the day when this is no longer considered a viable business method for journalism.
Outlet owners, writers and audiences all need to come together if we're going to get back to interesting, original stories.
It's not easy, but it's not impossible.
1/ Yesterday, I mentioned how during my time at Breaking Media, journalism eventually started to feel secondary to simply pumping out content and chasing traffic.
For context, Breaking Media is the company behind Football Insider and a number of club-specific football sites, which is where I worked.
Thought I'd take a bit of time to explain what the role actually looked like 🧵
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1/ Yesterday, I mentioned how during my time at Breaking Media, journalism eventually started to feel secondary to simply pumping out content and chasing traffic.
For context, Breaking Media is the company behind Football Insider and a number of club-specific football sites, which is where I worked.
Thought I'd take a bit of time to explain what the role actually looked like 🧵
Having also left Breaking Media recently, I can unfortunately relate to a lot of what Josh has said.
I worked with some brilliant people, but ultimately became completely disillusioned with the way the company was run. In my experience, journalism increasingly felt secondary to pumping out content, chasing traffic and manufacturing clickable headlines as quickly as possible.
All of that came while working as a self-employed contractor, despite having set shifts, rigid output expectations and various restrictions that often left me questioning how much independence I actually had.
Communication from Wayne Veysey was consistently one of the most frustrating aspects of my time there, while successive payment problems only added to that frustration.
Even after leaving, my final invoice was not paid by its due date despite repeated chasing. I eventually issued Breaking Media with a formal Letter Before Claim before the outstanding amount was subsequently paid.
I’m relieved to be out of that environment and have absolutely no regrets about leaving.
Fair play to Josh for speaking publicly about his experience. Unfortunately, having experienced the operation myself, very little of what he has written surprises me.
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5/ That matters because, obviously, these club-specific sites were being read by supporters who live and breathe those clubs.
Eventually, it began to make me uncomfortable that, no matter how much I knew about each club, I was covering nine clubs I don't support.
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14/ Eventually, enough was enough, and I asked to leave on 20 July.
The problems didn't end there. Both of my final two invoices went beyond their due dates despite repeated chasing, with the latter remaining unpaid for almost three weeks.
I eventually issued Breaking Media with a formal Letter Before Claim. The outstanding payment was subsequently made.
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15/ None of this is aimed at the writers still working there. As I said originally, I worked with some genuinely brilliant and talented people, and my criticism is of the model I experienced.
I'm writing it because football supporters deserve to understand how the content that they are often, understandably, frustrated by gets made.
I was part of that system, and I'm not pretending otherwise, but I realised I didn't want to spend my career feeding a content machine.
I was fed up, and fans are fed up too. Football media can be better than that, and it should be.
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Now that all is said and done…
Working for Breaking Media/Football Insider, what was it like for someone who spent 20 months there before having my contract terminated by email on a day off?
The people? Some of the best colleagues I’ve worked with, and that’s something I’ll continue to say for a long time. Genuinely some of the best people, and now friends, you could hope for.
The rest of it? 😬😬😬😬
For the majority of my time there, I felt undervalued, overworked and underpaid.
From my experience, late payments weren’t uncommon. On one occasion, my final invoice, payment was only made after several emails went unanswered and I made clear that I was considering legal action.
There were also restrictions that, in my experience, felt difficult to reconcile with being described as self-employed. I felt that I had many of the restrictions associated with employment without the security or benefits I would have reasonably expected to come with it.
Communication from the top, i.e. Wayne Veysey, was, in my experience, amateur at best, regardless of the topic at hand.
And after 20 months, my time there was ultimately summed up by my contract being terminated by email on a day off, while I was two months into a three-month notice period.
While the contract outlined their ability to do that, for me, that spoke volumes about how I felt I was valued and viewed during my time there.
Would I recommend working there? I think my opinion on that is clear.
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