These days, there is so much you can learn from watching a series or movie…mostly based on real-life events. You can have everything, from The Tinder Swindler to All or Nothing to MH370, all from the comfort of your home with just an internet connection.
My focus is on MH370 about the events that led up to and followed one of the most mysterious air disasters in aviation history involving Malaysia Airlines 370, which disappeared from the skies in 2014. And how aviation experts and a journalist specialised in that field explained the various theories surrounding the crash with such passion and knowledge. This got me thinking.
Years ago, I used to dream of being a pilot. Anytime I heard a passenger aircraft passing over, my instinct would be to rush out and look at the two, maybe four jet engines disrupt the quiet atmosphere.
In one of the two high schools I went to, I had an opportunity to take aviation classes, even though I was doing the British curriculum and nearly all of it was theory that I’d have probably forgotten by now.
Then, I grew up. The intrigues of life made me switch to studying Psychology for my university degree, writing a small book about a Kenyan spy adventure, running a relationship and dating blog in university and eventually joining the mixed world of Kenyan journalism, mainly digital because that’s all I’ve ever known—three years into it now.
However, I could argue that I’ve seen, and covered, all forms of journalism through Viral Tea Ke, where I’ve spent the majority of my journalism career. What I have not seen in Kenya or met is an aviation journalist.
I found the following about aviation journalism in Careers in Aerospace:
“As an Aviation Journalist, part of your job will involve researching and chasing down leads you come across via the various news articles and regulatory documents that land on your desk from around the world on a daily basis.
“You will be responsible for using the leads, information, and sources to build up articles that for an English-speaking B2B audience. The other part of your job will require you to build and maintain relationships with people from across the world who will then help you in corroborating stories as well as breaking news.”
This sounds more or less like sports journalism or business journalism or political journalists. One is likely to find aviation journalists in media houses in developed countries.
So why doesn’t Kenya have aviation journalism? What can be done to introduce that field? Are we waiting for something major to happen, for example the Kenya Airways plane crash of 2007 for every Ali, Kamau and Onyango to show his expertise in aviation? (I’m told coverage surrounding it lasted more than a week—constantly.)
I asked my fellow scribes about this and out of the unsatisfactory answers I got, the only solid one was that there’s a course in journalism at an aviation college in Kenya. But how far does this go?
Journalism is constantly evolving and adapting to new technologies, challenges and opportunities. As much as digital journalism is now causing disruption amongst mainstream media houses, I believe that introducing aviation journalism to our field of reporting could at the very least save our media houses from being overwhelmed by bloggers and influencers who aren’t hesitant to venture into the aviation niche.
Managing editor, Viral Tea Ke