Mourning passing on of digital news guru Anthony Kariuki

Nothing in the world prepares you for a sudden death of a colleague, a friend or a relative.

But when it happens, it forces you to think about that one thing, the one important moment, their legacy in your interaction.

The shocking news of the death of Anthony Macharia Kariuki, following a road crash on Friday night, a few metres from his Buruburu home was numbing and devastating.

It ushered in a terrible weekend for everyone who was close to him.

WORKER BEE

Every newsroom, every organisation, has a few of those.

The worker bees, the people who get things done. The quiet fellows who are always on time, who do their job with diligence and get the results; the fellows who do not shout about their work, yet everybody knows that the results would not have been that exceptional were it not for their input. Kariuki was that man.

In the fast-paced environment of digital news, Kariuki was the quintessential editor who ensured he broke news with speed and accuracy.

It did not matter whether you were sitting on the floor in the stuffy committee rooms at Parliament buildings, or whether you were covering a massacre deep inside Kilelengwani in Tana River County.

NEWS UPDATES

When Anto called for an update, you had to send a text and a picture from the scene.

There were no any consequences for not sending these promptly. It just felt right to do so. The future was digital.

Face to face, whatever the time, Kariuki’s greeting would be “Uko sawa?” (Are you okay?), followed by a relaxing silence, genuine interest beaming through his inquiring eyes behind the thick-rimmed spectacles that made him look geeky.

He learned that greeting — we all learned it — from our cheerful friend Lucas Barasa, now the Nation’s parliamentary and political affairs editor.

CONVERGENCE

When the Nation Media Group was experimenting with newsroom convergence and bought smartphones for all the journalists, Kariuki ran point to ensure the country was informed as events unfolded.

His boss, Churchill Otieno, the current Managing Editor, Online and New Content (and also the president of the Kenya Editors Guild) ran a tight ship, and in Kariuki, he had a dependable colleague, who cheerfully cajoled reporters as they came back into the newsroom with a reminder that they had to send a web version of their stories quickly.

If you were slow, he’d just ask, “What do we know?” and a few more probing questions to answer the 5Ws and the H, and after that he would craft a news alert from your summary.

Kariuki would let you and the print editors figure out the “So What” of the story to sell the next morning.

BREAKING NEWS

There was a silent policy that most of us knew: If a news story breaks, send an alert to Kariuki as soon as you learn the basics. Then as you gathered more facts, you put together a five-paragraph story, and send it to the digital news desk. The rest of the story would be in the paper later, but people needed to know as soon as things happened.

Google, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Instagram were not what they are today.

Their potential as disruptive players in the news ecosystem had not been exploited yet.

GAME CHANGERS

We were testing the system, and very few thought of these platforms as game-changers. Very few print editors — steeped in the story production schedule and the linear gate-keeping — understood why news had to be broken online first and disseminated freely.

If people knew today what news was in tomorrow’s paper, would they buy it?

We applied the same logic to radio, to TV, and we just could not get it.

Yes, people would still buy if you add value to the story.

And so Kariuki kept the pressure on journalists and we can still see his fingerprints whenever we look at the Nation website (www.nation.co.ke).

In trying to make Nation.co.ke and NationMobile fast, first and accurate, those days, he worked long crazy hours.

He was usually the first one on the News Desk, a raised rectangular platform with multiple workstations at the centre of the newsroom — in between giant round pillars on the third floor of the Nation Centre.

REHYDRATE

He would make many short trips — about five metres — from his desk to the water dispenser to rehydrate throughout the day, sometimes stepping out for quick lunches at the staff canteen, and at other times, he just decided to take a late lunch, at about 4pm, when the pressure eased.

And when I knocked off at about 8pm, after long days at Parliament, he would be folding his papers ready to call it a day.

Kariuki was a quiet man, gifted with a great analytical mind.

A man who, on some occasions, eavesdropped on great matatu conversations, and when he got back to the office, he would spend some time sharing his views about something as jarring as men who want to know what cooking fat their wives used.

“Let’s sit back and enjoy our meals and concentrate on politics, the stock exchange and football,” he told the men.

I agree.

GOOD LISTENER

He was a very good listener, and didn’t speak much, until he got to know you better.

A former colleague, Mugumo Munene, then the news editor at Sunday Nation, and now a communications professional, sat across from Kariuki, and remembers him “as a brilliant and tenacious professional who cared much for detail”.

“Over time, I came to know that Anthony loved his family deeply. He cared for both his own family and his extended family. He made time for his spirituality too. This is a great loss to his loved ones, his friends and the practice of journalism,” Mugumo tweeted when he heard the news of Kariuki’s death.

We usually had very intense political arguments about the State of politics in the country.

POLITICS

He kept a very open mind about Kenya’s politics and understood something very few journalists understand today: At the end of the day, you owe your allegiance to the readers. Politicians will practice their politics. It affects real lives. Journalists have to tell the story of the politics, the politicians and the people, with a lot more honesty and courage knowing that there were real-life consequences if the politics went bad. We saw it in 2007/2008.

Anto was an ardent football fan. And he loved Manchester United.

When he worked on Saturdays or Sundays, together with then senior journalist Jeff Otieno (an Arsenal supporter), they knew how to tinker with the decoder to ensure all the TVs, except one, around the News Desk were showing the English Premier League matches.

At about the time I was leaving the Nation, we had a very long chat about many things.

Life.

DP RUTO

A few months after my exit, Kariuki left to be the Social Media and Web Editor of Plan International, the regional office for Eastern and Southern Africa.

He then went to work with the Deputy President’s communications unit.

So, when I read the death announcement by the Deputy President William Ruto that Kariuki had been killed in an accident, I was sad.

I whispered a little prayer for his current boss David Mugonyi and his current colleagues, most of them good friends.

As the DP said, Kariuki was “sharp, dependable, industrious, committed and creative with positive attitude”.

The DP also spoke about his “hunger and stamina for knowledge, punctuality, team spirit and orientation to detail”.

That was an apt summary of the good fella.

He leaves behind a wife and two children.

Fare thee well Anto.