"The Sleepy Fox" Is Now "Eye on The Press"
I am focussing on what I do best
Düsseldorf, 4 August 2023 Filed under: Editorial
I have decided the rebrand this publication to sharpen its focus on what most of its issues have been about: The analysis, dissection and criticism of news stories from the realm of technology, politics, economics and society at large. Therefore, I am changing the publication’s name to Eye on The Press. I am also changing its format a bit, but don’t worry, the content you have gotten used to will stay largely the same.
What started as a daily newsletter has grown into a more irregular affair and while I fully intend to publish stories more regularly again, as promised, I will focus more on carefully selecting the topics I write about instead of trying to provide a daily account of the things I am reading. People who are interested in that sort of thing should probably also follow the notes section of the publication, which I hope will become the place for that in the future. I am also now tagging all of the posts — a function Substack has recently added — and you can now access my stories sorted by topics from the top navigation of the homepage.
The change in name and focus should serve to help me make better use of my time and, hopefully, provide you with more interesting and relevant content. That being said, every story I write on here will still have the personal touch you have probably become used to if you have been reading this publication for a while. I most certainly do not want to hold back on that, as I feel it is part of the charm of what I do here.
When I became a journalist over a decade ago, I did so because I love writing and because I thought I could do a better job at it than most of the people I saw covering the news at the time. A lot has changed since then. And not for the better. Journalists of all creeds and colours have become obsessed with writing about what should be, instead of what is.
The press is enormously powerful. In many ways, what becomes recorded history is not what actually happened, but what was reported to have happened. Journalists shape not only the opinions of society, in the information age, they shape reality itself. Like everyone else, politicians and leaders get their view of what happens around them from the media. If the press is convinced that a problem exists, or that something that is happening is a danger to society, sooner rather than later, so will everyone else. Including the ones who have to power to do something about it — as misguided as that may be.
That is why I think it is only prudent that someone should watch what the press is up to. And report on it. This publication exists to, in my small way, do my part in this. I might not see everything and I might not have enough time to cover all the things I do see, but I feel it is very important to at least try. And as someone who has had intimate experience in the trenches of daily news journalism, I at least know how the game is played and what irregularities to watch for.