eSport journalism versus Team concerns

Slasher knew he would walk on thin ice after the so called "leak" articles got published, but I think he did right by doing it anyways.

It is totally understandable that teamowners aren`t very happy about these (in their opinion) leaks, but they cant blame a person whose job it is to publish news for for doing so. Instead they should focus on preventing it for the future and I am not talking about any kind of embargo. THAT shit helps nobody. I did esport coverage for about 2 years for german websites and let me tell you a little about what I have experienced.

When I started following the scene and readmore (german esports magazine) was still young, reading it was awesome. You had detailed reviews, rumors, interviews and critical articles. Almost all of this is gone by today. Why? During my time in staff it happened multiple times that controverse articles got NOT published because the leadeditor said "no". The reason behind his decissions was pressure by clans or leagues. In the early days of german esports players, personalities or casters were way more open and talked to journalists. Journalists weren`t even journalists in that time, but fans who wanted to add something to the scene. So it happened that some facts became public that pissed people off. Those pissed off people contacted the leadeditor and said something like this:

"You will be contacted by our lawyer because of ..." (yep, that really happened)

"Our players will never talk to you again" (to be more specific mouz cs players declined interview requests by fragster.de for over a year)

"Bring this news about xxx (advertisment) or the next time I/we wont talk to you"

Barriers like this make it almost impossible to release something that makes the readers go "wtf" and it simply kills motivation for longtime staffers, that usually just get to write about matchscores and once in a while about a drunk stephano. What were the consequences for the german esport "journalists"? Every-fucking-body with decent connections stoped writing. Some went to leagues, some continue doing coverage within teams, but most of them just went inactive. If Slasher gets "shut down", even he might reach a point where he says "fuck it" and stops.

thank you for reading.

zul

a little sidenote:

Alex Garfield said in Inside The Game that Slasher did not come back to him for the interview, which he promised him exclusively. Slasher responded (and I think Alex not wanted to hear this): "I merely wanted the news" and went with it. And he didn`t steal shit from EG, since he did not get the information about the jeadong transfer from EG, but another source. Alex wanted to treat Slasher like a dog and throw him a bone. Maybe he didn`t realise Slasher is no dog.