notes from the desk

The blog

Thoughts on journalism, building Roylandz Media, and what it takes to turn a story into a career, written between shows.

LatestThe Craft
No script, no retake, no mercy

What live television teaches you about honesty that journalism school charges tuition to avoid mentioning.

July 1, 2026 · 7 min read
Journalism6 min read
What the newsroom teaches you that no classroom can

Deadlines, doubt and the discipline of getting the story right, on air, every single day.

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The Climb6 min read
The kerosene economy

A financial education, administered one lamp at a time. Tuition was paid in darkness.

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The Tour6 min read
Forty schools later, a field report on genius

The most gifted kid in Kenya has never held a microphone. That fact should keep the whole country up at night.

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Roylandz Media7 min read
Why I built Roylandz Media instead of waiting for a bigger platform

Brands do not need louder content. They need a strategy that respects the audience.

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The Craft5 min read
How to interview a man you disagree with

A field manual for keeping your eyebrows neutral while your opinions riot quietly behind them.

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The Climb5 min read
Valedictorian, eventually

On finishing school late, loudly, and first in the class. The timeline is not the achievement.

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The Book6 min read
Writing Born Broke, Built Loud meant going back to Lugari

You cannot write honestly about where you are from a distance.

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Unfiltered5 min read
Fame is a rental (mine is due Tuesday)

Notes on being recognised at the supermarket while buying the cheap bread, and other celebrity experiences.

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Journalism5 min read
The automation that runs quietly behind every Urban News post

I taught myself to code so the newsroom could spend more time on the story.

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Culture6 min read
What Campus Xposure taught me about Kenyan youth ambition

Every university we visit has a founder nobody outside campus has heard of yet.

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Roylandz Media6 min read
Co-founding the Urban Gang Tour: culture events done properly

A live crowd tells you the truth about your content faster than any metric does.

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Personal5 min read
What my father actually taught me at the breakfast table

He was not raising a journalist on purpose. He just loved the news.

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Journalism5 min read
From Kakamega classroom to Thika newsroom: what teaching gave me

Explaining a difficult idea to a room of teenagers is its own kind of broadcast training.

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Culture6 min read
Recording The Nairobi Podcast in the back of a matatu

Some interviews you cannot get in a studio. You have to go get them in the moment.

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Roylandz Media5 min read
What fronting campaigns for L'Oreal, Tecno and Infinix taught me about brand trust

A youth audience can tell the difference between an endorsement and an opinion.

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Personal5 min read
Being nominated for the People's Choice Awards did not feel like arriving

A nomination is a nice sentence in a bio. It is not the finish line.

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Journalism6 min read
Why I co-authored a report on journalist safety with the Global Cyber Alliance

The threats to African journalists moved online long before our safety training did.

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The Book5 min read
The two coffins, seven days apart

Some chapters of Born Broke, Built Loud took the longest to be able to write.

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Culture6 min read
Working across three languages, and what gets lost between them

English, Swahili and a stubborn but improving French all carry different truths.

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Personal5 min read
What a woman named Madame Zipporah taught me about being worth feeding

Tea, bread and a quiet hour with a book, from a deputy headmistress who has no idea she is in this story.

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Culture5 min read
Dung Day: what a cow-dung floor taught me about finding value in what everyone else calls waste

The world had decided cow dung was worthless. My village looked at the same substance and saw a floor.

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