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.
Sep 25, 2026 · 7:11 AM UTC
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2/ The biggest thing was the volume, with 10 articles required each day.
I worked scheduled eight-hour shifts, so I completed an average of one article every 48 minutes.
Finding an angle, doing the research, writing, sorting images and then straight onto the next one.
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3/ And that target didn't change because it was quiet on the news front, ten were still needed.
Quickly, you learned just how many different articles and angles could be produced from a quote, an interview elsewhere, social media, etc.
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4/ I wrote across sites covering Everton, Leeds, Tottenham, West Ham, Aston Villa, West Brom, Rangers and Sunderland.
I'm a Wolves fan who was obviously not embedded at any of those clubs.
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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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6/ Here's one of my own Goodison News articles as an example.
My author bio described me as someone who provides "extensive coverage of Everton's style of play".
In reality, I was a Wolves supporter writing across eight different club sites while trying to hit the same daily quota.
goodisonnews.com/match/evert…
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7/ I wasn't an Everton reporter, nor Leeds, Tottenham, West Ham or any club.
Of course, I'm not pretending I was above any of it. I wrote the articles and accepted the work.
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8/ But that's also why I understand supporters who get frustrated by repetitive stories, stretched angles or headlines that are far more exciting than what sits underneath them.
Eventually, I realised I couldn't keep pretending that this didn't matter.
As I mentioned in the original post, I didn't consider much of what I was doing to be journalism.
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9/ Traffic was central to the job, and in my experience, it took priority over the kind of journalism I actually wanted to do and what I personally feel fans want.
As I said at the top of the thread, the target was always 10 articles a day, no matter what.
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10/ I was never instructed to fabricate a story. I'm not going to make allegations about things I didn't experience.
My criticism is of the volume, however busy or quiet the football news cycle was that day.
As I think I have made clear, I am of the belief that this is not the type of content fans want to read about their clubs, and this eventually wore me down.
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11/ Away from the work itself, I was engaged as a self-employed contractor but worked scheduled eight-hour shifts and had a rigid daily output requirement, so it was extremely rare that I could take a lunch break.
I continued to question how independent I actually was.
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12/ With this in mind, the ten-article target was monitored heavily.
After producing eight articles rather than 10 in one day, I was required to make up the shortfall. When I produced 10 rather than 12, simply due to a lack of time in the day, I was issued a verbal warning.
I was then required to produce 12 again the next day.
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13/ The same applied when I was ill.
In my experience, missed days were expected to be made up, which at one point meant being scheduled across six days in a week.
This becomes increasingly difficult when you are already burnt out by the way the operation is being run.
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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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