I took the month of June "off" from being on the scene at competitions in order to stay home and be focused behind the computer. The time at home has its clear advantages as I can work more on articles that I love doing and get my creative juices flowing. Instead of incessantly feeling that I'm gasping for air under the work load, I can just commit to a full day sitting on my office chair and handle task after task without feeling guilty at 9 PM when I close the computer. I know I complain about this constantly - and I don't want to nag - but it's just one of the biggest mental hurdles I'm facing in my professional life (there are a few more...) and I'm really trying to sort this out through journalling it in a Newsletter.
The home stay gives me the opportunity to do thorough investigation on a subject, to take more time to interview riders and owners. I love writing stories for the Where Are They Now series, for instance. However, the diarrhea of daily complaints is incessant: "You're not objective", "that's not the real story", "that's not what happened", "oh my god what's up with all the typos", don't you know "Turkey is now Turkiye." Or you write a two-page article with a chronology and then one line is picked out and you get a flaming message "this is bullshit". The joys of journalism.
Over the years I have come to learn that there is no real version of the "truth". Between the rider and the owner of a horse there are often four versions floating around: the positive and negative version of each side and it's the job of the journalist to either present all versions or filter out the essence to find balance.
A week ago a colleague wrote an interesting and commendable editorial on the demise of Germany's most prolific and historic equestrian sport magazine St. Georg. The magazine existed for 125 years and was the true beacon of equestrian journalism. Last winter the publishing company fired its entire staff and resorbed the magazine into a new one, Hooforia. The first edition is a pretty lifestyle magazine with modern type-setting and big photos, but no content to inspires a critical thinker. I can only imagine the dramatic drop in subscriptions.
The death of St. Georg is a real tragedy as it literally leaves the equestrian world with less than a handful of quality publications. I honestly can only name three more (Horse Sport in Canada, De Paardenkrant in The Netherlands, Tidningen Ridsport in Sweden, and maybe breeding magazine Zuchterforum in Germany. They still dare to stand tall, straight back, feet firmly planted and raise issues in the sport seemingly without succumbing to legal intimidation and pressure.
Scare-tactic letters from lawyers are more and more frequent as some feel their money and legal muscle-flexing are what it takes to silence and bar the press from reporting justifiable facts. In Australia the legitimacy of the 2024 Australian Grand Prix championships is being questioned as allegedly the rules to decide the winner were changed at the Championship itself and were not ratified by Equestrian Australia. Not a single Australian equestrian publication dared to pick up the topic, yet Eurodressage gets asked to clean up the mess down under. I decided to sit on the fence on this matter.
Last night my dead pony Didi visited me in my dream like a spirit animal. I normally never dream about horses. She came into my bed room, fulled tacked up with her 1990 bought bridle, and nuzzled me. I"m not a spiritual person but I couldn't help but wonder if this was a sign of her being a war horse calling me to arms, or just her gentle touch soothing my professional worries. I'd left an impression, I have to say...
-- Astrid Appels