Reflections on journalism after Ochieng exits

The dust settling on the grave of lifelong journalist Philip Ochieng; in Awendo, the small town whose fame once lay in sugarcane farming, truly marks the end of a generation.

It is a generation that kicked in with the advent of independence and the emergence of a cadre of African journalists.

There are notable figures of this era: Hilary Ng’weno, Boaz Omori, George Mbugguss, George Githii, and Ochieng was one of them.

Each of these men is a book on its own, for they left an indelible mark in the craft of journalism in Kenya.

Some were dare devils, and certainly Ochieng and Githii fell in that category.

The duo seem to have taken pride in pocking the hornets’ nest, and sometimes successfully running away while they could, but at other times failing to do so and being forced to pay the price for their recalcitrance. 

Ngweno was the most innovative of them all. A journalism entrepreneur of no mean repute, he set the standard of analytical reporting in the region, a serial founder of publications, one after another and sometimes selling them off or letting them die with just as much speed, before moving on to the next project.

But something else that this generation did successfully, was to pass on the baton.

Weekly Review, the towering magazine that bore the signature performance of Ng’weno may have died, but Ng’weno himself mentored a host of journalists, most of who call the shots in Kenyan newsrooms today. 

It is a testimony of the man’s success that every major media house in Kenya, and the towering journalists who seem to be now putting their pens down owe their craft to Ng’weno.

It may not be a wild claim to suggest that the true fathers of Kenyan journalism were Ng’weno and Ochieng.

In saying so, we do not lose sight of great men, and they were largely men, who piled the trade prior to independence.

There were a host of publications, some of them consistently published while others appeared only periodically, that set the pace for what was to come.

This group featured a lot of independence heroes such as Pio Gama Pinto, Harry Thuku, Sharrif Nassir, Achieng Oneko, and even Jomo Kenyatta.

But this first generation bred a more cautious group who walked only on safe territory.

Unlike their predecessors, they were more schooled in the craft of journalism and boasted real certificates earned from some of the best universities in the country or even in the world.

They have probably been more successful in keeping the boat steady and have boasted great profits.

This generation came of age in the 1980s and the 1990s and their struggles were largely of survival rather than opening new vistas of the craft.

It is worth recognising that in this generation there are a couple of women who have dared to imagine and sometimes, like in the case of Parents, stayed the course.

The question is where journalism in Kenya goes from here? The influence of the second generation is strong on the third one.

It is a journalism that keeps looking over its shoulders, afraid of what the owners of the media and the advertisers would say, too afraid to experiment.

The result is dull journalism, churning out material that could be anybody’s guess, and waiting for the future to sort itself out.

Much of the energy of this generation is directed towards occupying the civil space, and scanning classified ad sections for a public relations practice opportunity.

The number of associations of journalists is simply daunting with new ones coming up so often.

There is the Media Council of Kenya with the mandate to hybrid regulate the trade and the Editor’s Guild now as vibrant as it has ever been.

Among these organisations probably the oldest, Kenya Union of Journalists is the one being overwhelmed by the visibility of its siblings. — The writer is dean, School of Communication, Daystar University