In 2027, I will have spent 20 years accidentally becoming a popular figure in the global wristwatch media landscape. In 2007, I was a plucky watch enthusiast with a nagging urge to share my boisterous opinions about watches. So I started a blog (it was trendy at the time), and it turned out that the internet was hungry for what I was publishing on aBlogtoWatch.com. Soon after, I decided to shift my career to being my own boss and writing about watches full-time. I am the first person in the world who made a full-time living writing about watches online.

My roughly 20 years of experience in the space probably lends me enough authority to plainly state that you cannot trust the wristwatch media space. Whether it is a printed magazine, website, social media account, video, or in-person lecture, you cannot put too much authority in the statements made by most of the men and women who constitute the very loosely associated group of content creators we call “watch media.” There isn’t a conspiracy. It isn’t really their fault. Rather, there are simply too many incentives against the practice of developing media authority based on sharing your honest, authentic opinion on most matters.

The most common incentive against watch media “being real with you” is the fact that honesty doesn’t pay very well. Media is mainly funded by individual users willing to pay because of exceptional entertainment value, or instead, by advertisers willing to fund content that helps them sell goods and services. None of this bodes well for honest, often boring, well-rounded content. Today’s media landscape either wants content creators to be emotional magicians, able to extract user attention and engagement in a crowded landscape of options, or thinly veiled commercial content that is funded because of the hope that viewers will immediately decide to go purchase something after watching it. If you merely want to educate people about the world of watches and help them separate the “good” from the “bad,” there are no readily available business models suitable to support ongoing content creation of that type. I know, because I’ve tried them all.

Making things worse is that the companies that make most wristwatches hold powerful leverage in the form of access. Meaning, because their products are rare and expensive, they can control who has access to them and who can view them for media purposes. That has made most luxury watch makers media gatekeepers in addition to brands. Knowing that people cannot (or will not) write about them unless invited to do so, a lot of brands carefully orchestrate media relationships in order to only get “supportive” coverage that makes them immediately look good. Any time a member of the watch media even mildly critiques or questions the decisions of a watch brand, that media person risks irritating the brand and thus losing access temporarily or permanently. Given this context, how many members of the watch media risk being blacklisted?

A few do, and I have been among them. In the last two decades, I’ve felt all forms of ire from watch brand managers. Early on in my career, I was much more brazen and a lot less polite. I had no relationships with most watch brands and the people running them. I spent a few years saying anything I wanted to, until I started to regularly travel to Switzerland, Europe, and other watch hubs around the world. Faced with the pressure of maintaining relationships with brands as well as aBlogtoWatch audience members, I needed to adapt and pivot multiple times. Never in radical ways, but I also strove to ride a fine line between being honest and real with my readers, while actively supporting the interests of the larger watch industry even if my feedback included deserved criticism and feedback from time to time. I would say that a vanishingly small number of media professionals such as myself have found this balance. In most instances, members of the watch media become opinion mercenaries who are unwilling to challenge the gatekeepers, or instead they leave the watch media space because the indignity of having to placate sensitive managers is intolerable to them. I don’t blame them.

Can you trust me? What makes me different? I cannot exclude myself from the larger class of watch media members. Am I just as untrustworthy? No, but merely because of a fluke in how I arrived in the professional media space and how I operate professionally. I trained as a lawyer before starting the aBlogtoWatch online media company and have always practiced content publishing with a similar ethical standard of duty as an attorney might apply in their work. More so, I have a history of reading consumer advocacy publications. Prior to ever writing a wristwatch review, I had read thousands upon thousands of product reviews by responsible media members who discussed the good, the bad, and the ugly of the products they were writing about. It never occurred to me that a product review journalist might risk losing access for being too honest. I operate under the belief that constructive criticism is a necessary element of a self-improvement loop. The watch industry continues to evolve and make new products. By definition, that means that companies have the opportunity to refine, fix, and evolve. Not all of their efforts succeed, but they need market and media feedback so that manufacturers and designers can better hone their craft. Therefore, I don’t produce honest or trustworthy media because it pays to do so. Rather, I do so because it is the only type of media that I was trained to understand and value. While I am not alone, there aren’t very many people like me left working in the watch media ecosystem.

A very effective way to determine if watch media cannot be trusted is if a media person encourages their viewers to adopt their opinion. If they publish a “top 10” list, they encourage their viewers to trust the creator's knowledge and skills at making such a nuanced selection. This is not a scientific argument; rather, a “top 10 list” is just an attempt to ask the audience to adopt the opinion of the media personality. Another example is if a media person suggests that a watch is “an investment piece,” or “is important,” or is aesthetically pleasing. All of these suggestions are merely attempts at asking a user to “take the media creator's word for it.” The problem is that when watch media makes highly opinionated pieces, it is almost always to further an agenda. Often a commercial one. Audiences want members of the media to serve as informed extensions of themselves. That is what media should be in an ideal world. Because the internet expects people to create media first, and then perhaps hope to monetize it second, most of the people who are producing content online have a profit agenda. That’s fine, but views alone don’t really make money. Instead, to earn appreciable money, most watch media has to do dirty work like convincing people to purchase an uncompetitive product, or not to question the poor pricing of a particular brand.

Making things more complicated for cautious consumers is the fact that people who sell watches also consider themselves part of the watch media space. Legacy labels such as “journalist” don’t apply anymore because so few watch content creators are employed by a specific publication. In fact, most watch media professionals working today are employed by companies that sell watches. These people either work directly for brands or retail companies that sell watches. Sometimes the content creators themselves sell watches but still use terms like “blogger, influencer, content creator, or media person” to describe themselves. This is the internet information landscape circa 2026, with nearly no language police or authorities to govern how people position themselves professionally.

Do watch retailers make good watch media? That’s a good question and one that the watch industry is trying to digest right now. I’ve made the observation that even if consumers view media produced by retailers, they inherently don’t trust it. Consumers either need to make a decision for themselves what to buy, or at the least they look for unincentivized voices to trust. The data I have seen suggests that while watch retailers can garner views when publishing media content, they are hardly shifting the cultural landscape or leading important conversations that change consumer behaviour unless independent voices support those positions.

Even if watch media cannot be trusted, most consumers still need trustworthy watch media. That’s mainly because the watch collecting hobby is so compelling as well as intimidating. Understanding how to spend your money, let alone how to search for watches you might emotionally connect with, is hard. The watch appreciation hobby by nature requires time, experience, and the adoption of culture. That doesn’t stop people from attempting shortcuts, even if they don’t work in the long run. Shortcuts include following the “advice” of untrustworthy content creators who simply know what viewers want to hear, or copying the collecting habits of another person and assuming that their choices will also bring you joy. That has led to a situation where most watch media content is simply a version of telling people what they want to hear, while promising to give them shortcuts to making emotionally satisfying choices and purchase decisions. That type of stuff isn’t fun to make, and it isn’t ultimately very useful to consumers.

My advice to consumers is to use watch media to learn about the greater assortment of timepiece products available, and to make up their own minds about what is good, bad, and everything in between. That’s good advice, but it ignores the fact that such content still requires an incentive to create in the first place. For the time being, there still aren’t many watch media platforms whose incentives are ideally aligned with consumers. Even if my company, aBlogtoWatch, is a notable exception, I too often feel that we are guilty by mere association with the “watch blogger” category. Ironically, that is a media category I initially helped to create.

Advancing professionally as a watch content creator has, in large part, been a practice of separating myself from most other watch media. There are certainly some other wonderful people with a passion for truth and honesty. That is true, and I won't deny it, but in each instance you will also find an example of emotional neutering as opinions and honest industry feedback are constantly held back out of fear of fallout and misunderstandings. There isn’t much I can do to change that, but at least I can have an open and honest conversation about the watch media landscape.

If you are a consumer who is learning about watches or a seasoned collector, you need to rely on watch media for access to a lot of different types of information. Be wary of opinion peddlers, performance charmers, and faux-elitists. Practice the art of “caveat emptor” at all times, and don’t be afraid to see past polished facades and production values. Rely on watch media as a portal to the otherwise obstructed world of horology. Be careful about how much authority you put into any one opinion or position. If you agree with me, then I hope it is because we have come to the same conclusions and not merely because you take my word for it. I don’t care if you agree with me; I just want to make sure you understand why I feel the way I do on a given matter. That’s the best I can offer as a watch media professional. I encourage you not to settle for anything less.