Live from the bottom of the pit

It’s been a while since I wrote an editorial about this project and where it’s headed.

After enduring a week of hate and gaslighting, I feel like it’s an apt moment to own it. This should also be helpful for new visitors who trickled in since I last spoke about this subject.

I’ve been called many things; besides a regular stream of insults, I’ve also been labelled as an opportunistic traitor. Someone who likes to pontificate. A loser with no prospects.

Dishonest, biased, and unreasonably angry. A beggar who asks for money to keep shelling our poor defenseless government. A fool with an axe to grind and nothing to lose.

Even people who support this project tell me that gonzo journalism will not earn me any friends anywhere. That I am needlessly putting myself at risk with great cost and precious little reward.

In spite of the hate, the threats, the labels, and the warnings, this website endures.

Though most other media outlets abhor my style and would never touch it with a ten-foot pole, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

To be brutally honest, my initial attempts at setting up a tentative structure for this website have yielded mixed returns. In the long-term, I certainly cannot continue doing this alone.

We are still in our infancy and are yet to establish a stable system to cover all basic operational costs, let alone build the kind of newsroom I’d like to set up.

Having said that, I can also cautiously and optimistically note that this untenable situation is shifting. After toiling away alone for almost three years, I think we may have cracked it.

Though nothing is set in stone yet and there is a lot of ground left to cover, I am now far more confident that we can hold out long enough to attract serious donors who wish to invest in a better democracy.

For the time being, I will keep it vague until a clearer picture emerges – what I can say is that you should expect a public announcement about how this website’s operations are going to be restructured and improved throughout the summer.

I understand that some of you may have lost faith in this project. I also understand that I’ve given off very bleak signals that probably scared a few people away.

After all, why should you bother with listening to what I have to say if I also sound like I’m a column away from throwing in the towel?

Here’s why: because, even though it’s true that we did come close to crashing and burning completely more times than I can bother counting, our loyal community and supporters always came through with just enough.

Even though the Labour Party and its machinery regularly try to crush us, our messaging is so finely calibrated that nothing can be done to prevent it from leaving a mark on those who seriously engage with it.

Even though our no-holds barred approach wins us no friends, it also won us the begrudging respect of anyone who’s ever crossed swords with us.

And, most importantly of all, though it may seem like somewhat uncoordinated madness, there is a method to the disruptive logic of what I do. The blueprint for how to develop this into something bigger than myself has existed since day one – I just never had enough juice to bring it fully to life yet.

The simple truth is that a beautiful country that has morphed into an ugly mafia state needs the kind of bitter medicine that only a wildcard element can deliver.

I am willing to bet anything that there is nobody in this country who still reads the news who is interested in sloppy PR drivel and bland reporting that fails to scrape the skin – let alone cut to the bone.

What Malta really needs is someone who is willing and able to report from the bottom of the pit, someone who does not refrain from announcing that the nation is, in fact, knee-deep in the raw sewage of corruption.

I’m not talking about sanctimonious editorials from our nation’s most illustrious newspapers, those who bravely call out corruption while being among the first to bathe in the cesspool.

I’m talking about driving a wooden stake right in the chest of the monster that stalks our nation’s nightmares.

We don’t just stop at paying lip service.

The Critical Angle Project wasn’t created to platform the kind of half-truths and outright lies that are the lifeblood of politics. This website was created with the express purpose of unraveling them, one by one.

To do that as well as any journalist ought to do, one cannot be inextricably linked with the machine. You cannot hold power accountable if your relevance depends on your adjacency to it.

The real beating heart of this project is that wave of indignation that roils your soul anytime you witness injustice.

As long as humanity has a pulse, projects like mine will continue having a reason to exist – because justice does not come at the hands of the placid.

It starts with a raging fire and a furious pen.