“I had a love-hate relationship with journalists…”

Following training and support from Thomson Reuters Foundation, in partnership with Baraza Media Lab, Nelly Awino and Seliphar Musungu reflect on the assumptions they held about each other’s work and what changed when they started working together. 

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Nelly, content creator

What was your perception of journalism before the workshops?

I think I had a love-hate relationship with journalists (Sorry, Seliphar)! I kept hearing journalists claim that content creators are just after the fame and don’t care about facts.

On our side, we felt traditional media relied too much on “textbook English”, that day-to-day communities don’t actually relate to.

And after…?

Being in the sessions was an eye-opener because I realised our processes can go hand in hand. We both investigate matters of public interest; we just use different mechanisms to deliver what we do best. 

I have been loving my collaboration with Seliphar so far. 

What has Seliphar brought to your project that you wouldn’t have been able to do without her?

Seliphar is SO good with people. The fact that she is a journalist means she is out there talking to people all the time. Her legal knowledge is great as well, which has really contributed to the quality of the project. 

We are working together to build a media literacy campaign to protect first-time voters from election misinformation. Seliphar brought deep research skills, structural layout, and heavy insight into the legal aspect of information sharing that the digital space desperately needs. 

What was your most memorable moment with Seliphar?

Everything Seliphar taught me about working with people. During the workshops, we had people from the community come in. We talked to them together about our project. This challenged me to look back at my independent work and ask how many times I’ve put projects out there without doing a real-world needs assessment first. 

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Seliphar, Journalist

What was your perception of content creation before the workshops?

Journalists can feel quite insecure when creators show up to the same events. We tend to police them, asking “where is your press card?”. Media owners sometimes prefer hiring creators who are natural talkers, so traditional journalists easily see them as a threat.

Did taking part in the workshop change anything?

I learnt so much about things like video editing from Nelly and the other creators at the workshops. It showed me how much we can learn from each other. I also realised that while we have regulatory bodies to protect us from online bullying and defend media freedom, creators have no formal protections. We need to coexist and advocate for them, too.

What has Nelly brought to your project that you wouldn’t have been able to do without her?

She brought a different perspective. I’m used to long-form storytelling, but through this collaboration, she taught me simple tools to tell the same story on different social media platforms.

It meant a long-form feature could be broken down into a shorter video. We still had both types of content, but combining our different approaches will help bring stories to a wider audience.

What was your most memorable moment with Nelly?

Exchanging ideas with her and seeing how different skills coming together can really help strengthen a story.

I’m very, very excited to continue this project and the collaboration. And I just hope that our collaboration will be kind of like an eye-opener to the two groups so that they can see that the journalists and creators can really work together and come up with something great.

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