On Awards And Independence

Receiving my first award since becoming a Substack man and why it's shared by all of you.

Yesterday I am happy to say I received the Esports Award for Journalist of The Year. It was my third time winning since the awards began in 2016 and my first since receiving a lifetime achievement award from the same panel in 2020. While awards and accolades don’t really mean all that much hopefully now my position as someone who made a significant contribution to the esports industry is cemented and I can stop thinking so much about it. For now though, since as I didn’t make much of a speech and do owe some people some thanks, we’ll plough through some self indulgent bullshit before getting back to work.

Increasingly those who start on the path realise that journalism in the esports space is a mug’s game. Your non-journalist colleagues will ask you questions like “why do you always have to highlight the negative things” with a straight face, tacitly imploring you to stop rocking the very nice boat they’ve just bought for themselves. Your journalist colleagues will often be more disappointing, whoring themselves out for access and doing it cheaply. The very public you serve will call for you to be fired or killed each time a headline you penned incenses them and have created a ridiculous set of rules where the only thing worse than reacting to the abuse is blocking it off. It takes a persistent and acute self loathing to wake up and do this to yourself every day when far easier and more lucrative ways to make a living beckon. It reminds me of the Jake La Motta quote about his boxing style… “I fought like I didn’t deserve to live.”

I’ve seen some of our best come and go down the years, most of them thankfully moving on to better things, and I’m happy for them. As I recently talked about we’re running thin on quality journalists and pretty much those that are left were all nominated alongside me and would have been worthy winners too. Still, it’s likely only a matter of time before they too get bored, or the vertical they write for has its funding pulled, or their employers place so many limits on what they can write they may as well be funnelling press releases through a thesaurus. This business was always shit and now it’s set to be dominated by Saudi money it’s likely to only get shitter and potentially more dangerous… I’m purposefully not dealing with my weight problem so it’s harder to fit me into a suitcase. One has to take precautions.

So with all that in mind this award is the best of them and not in any type of clichéd “you’re only as good as your last win” meaning. This one is the first award since going independent and as such it belongs to all the people that have financially supported my ability to do the work that I do. Digital media is in the toilet and the only thing that comes close to making financial sense is clickbait and churnalism, none of it about esports. For some context on where we’re at consider that an article about an influencer using vaginal yeast to make a beer generated more views and shares than the entirety of my 2022 output for the same publication. That fact alone would break most reporters but not me… The reality is I’ve found an audience that does give a shit about the problems facing esports and media and they’ve chipped in to enable me to cover those issues at the pace required without having to resort to throwing in the odd piece about twat related beverages.

Achieving that kind of independence and getting to operate outside the system that’s reliant on “playing nice” is a dream for most serious reporters and it’s not lost on me. The community I’ve built around my work – both the reporting and my subsequent commentary on it – has supported me for a long time but never has it been more important. After all, I doubt there’s an esports publication that would hire me that would agree to the same terms with which I can produce work now. By the same token if I ever did return to a publication whose money would I be taking and could I take it?

Anyway, hopefully in some way the award acts as a kind of a North Star for the journalists who ambivalent about their futures. Simply put, if you do good work you should be able to find an audience to support you and share your work and it will be recognised. Now more than ever if you can get out of the nightmare mode juggling act of feelings, economics and truth to be free to focus on the most important ball you should totally do it. There’s going to be an avalanche of bullshit and retconning of history over the next two years and it’s imperative that as many people as possible are on hand to push back against it.

Finally a very heartfelt thankyou to each of you who have subscribed, donated, signed up to patreon, joined Substack, shared, listened and read my work this year. It’s an award shared by all of you and something I’m grateful to you for. I hope through 2024 and beyond I continue to earn your trust and support as I take on the fights I think matter.