Tracy Bonareri Onchoke, Thomson’s Young Journalist of the year 2025 is hoping the accolade will be a springboard to more cross-border collaboration between young journalists. The 26-year-old investigative journalist who works at Africa Uncensored in Kenya, beat 226 journalists from 60 countries to win the coveted prize.
Paying tribute to the ‘courage’ of those who trust her to tell their stories, Tracy says the award is ‘an incredible honour’. She was unable to travel to London for the Foreign Press Association (FPA) ceremony because of delays in the visa process. The audience was shown a pre-recorded speech. Here Tracy reveals what inspired her to become an investigative journalist, the risks that go with the job and her hopes for the future.
Congratulations on being named Young Journalist of the Year. How did you celebrate?
On Monday [the night of the award ceremony in London] I just decided to go home and sleep and not think about it because I was having a lot of anxiety. Then on Tuesday morning, one of my colleagues just calls me and is like, “Congratulations!”
I'm like, “What are you talking about?” And she said, “You actually won.”
So, I came to work and celebrated with my colleagues and also with my family.
Do you hope this win will open the door to more opportunities for you?
I believe it will because speaking to other people who submitted their stories, you realise that we all have the same challenges, [but] we are reporting independently. So bringing in the cross-border aspect…we all have similar problems and reporting on them together is something I’m really looking forward to. Also, getting an opportunity to mentor younger journalists…younger than me. We've already started something in our organisation called Campus Tours, where we go to various universities and mentor young journalists. But now this should be able to open doors for us to be able to even reach younger journalists outside Kenya and beyond African borders.
Who or what inspired you to become an investigative journalist?
It’s actually my current boss where I work - his name is John-Allan Namu. I remember when I was younger, he used to have an investigative show on KTN, one of the channels in Kenya. It was called Jicho Pevu, that's Swahili, and the English version was called The Inside Story. And just watching him tell these stories and humanising issues that were rarely discussed and then following up and ensuring justice is served, at least to the best of their degree, him and his colleague Mohammad Ali, really inspired me.
What sort stories do you like to cover and how do you choose the ones you are going to investigate?
I like to call them passion projects because if I'm passionate about something, best believe I'm going to work on it. Of the three stories I submitted, one was on sports. I love sports a lot...and stories that focus on women, children and gender minorities. In Kenya, especially for gender minorities, those stories are hardly ever covered because most of the time journalists might be afraid of the backlash that comes with covering such stories. We've seen it. When we cover a gender minority story, the one piece of advice you're given is never go back to the comments section.
The process is that my editor or the head of investigations will come and tell me there's this story that we have. Do you think it’s something you could work on? Then I'll tell them, link me to the source and I'll listen to them and after listening to them, I can't explain it but if I feel it in my heart, then I'm going to do it.
[The job] is not easy. It can get quite dangerous, but it's very fulfilling
You have mentioned the risks that come with telling these stories. How do you manage those risks?
Now we have a dedicated social media team to handle such issues. We also have therapy where you can just go and talk to people. Between us in the newsroom, if you feel like you're getting overwhelmed, you talk to your colleagues. My colleagues at least are very nice, they listen, they offer advice where they can. I think it's very difficult to mitigate the risks that come with it because the people who you're ideally supposed to report these issues to are sometimes the perpetrators of whatever is happening to you, so just protect your space. Whenever a serious story is being published, you do your risk assessment. If it's extremely risky, you know when to leave before the story is published and things like that.
What advice do you have for any young journalist who wants to make the move into investigative journalism?
It's not easy. It can get quite dangerous, but it's very fulfilling. It's very fulfilling when you see things you have advocated for [leading to]action being taken by the various stakeholders. Trust your gut, be yourself and create a supportive community around you because sometimes this work can become overwhelming. So create a supportive community around you, something that you can fall back on when days are long or when assignments are tough or when you feel scared.
You can watch Tracy's interview below.
