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I spent the past two years building up towards this moment.
During this time, everything in my life revolved around this project. I spent a year developing the concept, the data library, and a small array of features and investigations to spice up the launch.
The project itself was conceived as I sat alone in an empty, deserted parking lot. I was still in disbelief over what was the latest unlikely twist in Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder case at the time. That evening, I was hired to shoot photos for an event organised by an NGO, but all I could think about was that nobody – and I really do mean nobody, not even now – has adequately faced justice for her murder.
Throwing the triggermen under the bus doesn’t cut it. If we stop there, then justice hasn’t been fully served. Holding the alleged mastermind under arrest while still waiting for a criminal trial doesn’t cut it, either. The whole edifice must come crumbling down.
So I sat there, in the darkness of an unlit road, sketching madly on my notepad while using my phone’s torch for lighting, until I felt like I figured out how I wanted to do it and what it would look like. I still have my notes from that same, exact evening. To say that the fury I felt was clearly expressed in the choice of vocabulary would probably be an understatement.
My notes from that evening.
For whatever reason, injustice always pissed me off, from a very young age. I could never tolerate it, nor the feelings one experiences when subjected to it.
I became an activist in my very early twenties with the intent of doing something about all the injustice I witnessed. Four years ago, I effectively began transferring the effort I put into activism into my work as a journalist instead. Sometimes, the urgency of that conviction – forged as it is in the desperate anger of a young man who was smart enough to know his future was being sold off to the highest bidder – overtakes everything else.
This project was one such instance. When I first set out on this journey, I had no definite plans. All I knew was that it needed to be done, for Daphne’s sake, because ultimately, the cost she paid for the truth was her life. Anger blew the notion of making the cowardly, rational decision of sticking by my post out of the water. There was no way I’d continue ducking my head down at a desk in some forlorn newsroom where I’d be muzzled, exploited, or both. I wanted to do better. I wanted to do more.
That first year was grueling. I spent some time looking at old journal entries from the time before writing this column. I’d completely forgotten about the day referred to in the note below. Reading the entry instantly jogged my memory – I pictured myself in a lonely street in Żurrieq, sitting alone in a car yet again, wondering why on earth I was putting myself through this when I had nothing to show for it and no kind of guarantee that any of this would succeed.
A journal entry from May, 2023.
I was so broke at the time because I had just managed to land a second part-time job but hadn’t been working long enough for the first paycheck to come through as of yet. Given that both of those part-time gigs happened to be in the mental health sector, I had to go through extensive training periods before being able to work alone, meaning I had to wait even longer for any income to start coming in. I’d just turned 28 twelve days before I wrote that entry. Looking at it now still gives me a shiver.
It took me months to figure out the right balance. The whole point was to be able to do journalism for most of my time while working a relatively easy night shift time job and an appointment-only gig throughout the day. For a while, it sort of worked, though I spent most of my time going from one thing to another, hoping I’d make enough to scrape by while giving myself time to write real stories without being bogged down by editorial bullshit and office politics.
After slaving away for almost a year, I finally published The Critical Angle project, and here we are.
In one year, I published over two hundred articles, including complex, original investigations which garnered tens of thousands of views. In collaboration with our partners, we’ve published several innovative, well-received audiovisual projects, a format which I had never properly worked with before as a journalist.
All of this work is being carried out with the support of a mere couple dozen donors, family members, and friends. The sacrifice that sustains all of this has come at great personal cost to yours truly. I’ve had far too many sleepless nights, missed too many events, lost too many friends, and had one too many arguments with loved ones. This level of commitment without any kind of financial security is a constant strain on my well-being, and it is taking a chronic kind of toll at this point.
I never wanted to go into this level of detail about what it took to get here because I’m not here for a pity party. I did all this because I believed the mission was worth pursuing and that sticking my neck out for it was going to be worth it. I took this on because I saw the opportunity to create something the media landscape of the country desperately needs.
After two years of running on fumes, however, I cannot delay launching a serious fundraising effort any longer. While the donations that have trickled in so far have been enough to serve as life support, it is time to turn this one-man show into a serious organisation, and I cannot do that without you.
My goal for the past year has been to prove to everyone who comes across my work that I mean business and that I will stop at nothing to fulfill my duty. I love journalism and it is the only thing I want to do, and this is the only way I want to do it. I don’t want to flood my homepage with a ridiculous amount of advertisements. I don’t want to accept corporate or state funding, because you cannot call out corruption on one corner of your website and promote its sponsors with a fun advert on the other.
I don’t know whether this insane leap of faith that I took for this project will pay off. I don’t know whether our efforts were enough to convince our followers to donate to our project and help us raise funds for the next phase we’d like to move into. If we don’t get the funding we need to keep this going, I don’t know what the next steps will be yet, either.
All I know is that this needed to be done, so I did it, and I’m damn proud to be here today, asking for your support. I can say that because we do irreverent journalism and we’re fucking good at it, and we hope enough of you see that, enough to keep this dream going for a while longer at least.
The only way they are going to stop us is if they bury us, knowing not that we are seeds that will germinate an uprising.
Whatever happens and whatever you choose to do, thank you for being here. It’s been an incredible journey, and I appreciate that you bore witness to it.