Ochieng' never 'talked down' to please Lilliputian readers

Once veteran journalist and editor Philip Ochieng’ spotted a good news story and a talent, he would go to all lengths to defend them, sometimes to his personal cost.

Ochieng' died on Tuesday night at 83. His family said he died of pneumonia.

Media practitioners on Wednesday eulogised Ochieng' as the journalist's journalist.

Kenya Broadcasting Corporation director Charles Mulila described Ochieng' as the "father of modern-day journalism".

"The newsroom, especially the print chapter, is weeping," Mulila said.

Renowned journalist Charles Onyango-Obbo described Ochieng' as "an author, wordsmith and a pan-Africanist".

Journalist Wangethi Mwangi, who was hired by Ochieng' and took his place at the Daily Nation as managing editor when Ochieng' left for the Kenya Times, called him a "perfectionist gentleman who nurtured his writers".

When he was the editor-in-chief of the Kanu-owned Kenya Times, journalists Joe Odindo and Gray Phombeah wrote a story about the Italian mafia in Kenya. It implicated senior government officials and cast President Daniel Moi's government in a bad light.

Government officials, including then-powerful provincial administrator and later PS Oyugi Ogango, were fuming.

Ochieng’ was summoned to State House where power mandarins ordered him to retract the article and immediately dismiss Odindo and Phombeah. 

But he stood his ground despite the verbal pummelling and sneering. He stood by his reporters and defended the story, refusing to sacrifice them.

Odindo, another veteran journalist who has headed both the Daily Nation and the Standard in the past, told the Star Ochieng’ believed no paper worth its salt would keep publishing if it did not carry investigative pieces that sometimes rattled the powerful.

He so believed in public service reporting that every week he maintained a roll call of MPs who missed parliamentary sessions, highlighting the contributions of those present, especially when important matters were discussed.

This put him at loggerheads with those within the sanctum of power.

“It strained his relationship with the government and the powerful at the time,” Odindo said.

Odindo also recalled how principled Ochieng’ was and how he abhorred shortcuts.

For example, when Ochieng’ was a managing editor at the Daily Nation, Odindo worked under him as a trained reporter. Though he loved journalism, he said, he had not gone to a journalism school to get formal training.

So an opportunity arose for him to join Kenyatta University and he faced a choice of either deferring his studies and continuing at the Nation or going to school.

“I asked him for advice as my boss. He was frank. He told me to resign and go to school, advising that ‘the Nation would always be here but your education can’t wait,’” Odindo said.

Odindo went to university and returned to the paper three years later. Ochieng' promptly hired him.

Ochieng' did not subscribe to the journalistic cardinal rule that the writer must break down a story to the level of the least sophisticated reader and use simple words.

He did not just use language to express himself and tell a story, his mind had an  academic orientation, he read widely and shared his knowledge.

"It is not the duty of the writer to lower himself and his craft to the ignorance of the reader," he would say.

"It is the readers' duty to improve themselves. to read better and higher, and raise themselves to the understanding of the writer."

And at one time a reader of his column in the Nation complained through a letter to the editor that he used very difficult words in his writing that made reading his article very difficult.

The letter read: "Philip Ochieng's column is unnecessarily hard to read, full of vocabularies. I can hardly understand anything he says. Can he please tone down so that he wins many readers? He's alienating readers."

But Ochieng' would have none of it. He hammered home his philosophy.

"Precisely why a newspaper has many sections: the headlines, cartoons, my column, sports, crosswords, relationship advice, etc. If you find my column beyond your intellectual acuity, just flip the page, and go read other things, perhaps cake recipes, or even obituaries," Ochieng' retorted.

"I will not write in pedestrian English, merely to satisfy academic Lilliputians!"

Weighing in on that, Odindo said, "His use of language would not be the best to expand readership, but he still used the words anyway and many people love it."

(Edited by V. Graham)