Aidah Nabunjo
Sep 5, 2022
Veteran Journalist Tonny Geoffrey Owana and CEO of OwanaPaedia revealed that his journalism career began while still a student at Caltec Academy Makerere.
Owana, who has worked for almost all newspapers since 1986 made the revelation during Tuesday’s Groove Cafe segment on the Groove Show with Crystal Newman.
“While at Caltec Academy, I started a newspaper called the Caltech Mirror. It was a weekly paper of A4 pages and I used my hands to print it. I would post it on the notice board every once a week. We were only able to produce one publication which was a magazine,” he narrated.
“So my journalism can be traced back to that period. My father was also a journalist who worked for Agafa Ebuvanjuba, a Luganda newspaper published for the Eastern community but in Luganda. This paper was published in the late 50s and 60s,” he narrated.
He said that although he did not go to Makerere University after high school, he joined the Democratic Party (DP) and its publication Omunansi, which he said operated under fear of the government at the time.
In 1986, he joined the mainstream media and worked with Weekend Digest. However, the newspaper was banned after it published a story alleging that the 1986 coup plot against the NRM government had been foiled which got two of its editors jailed for sedition.
He became the editor of the paper but when it became inoperative. He started working with Telecast and says, “I have almost worked for all the newspapers most of which are defunct.”
Owana noted that he served as a journalist even though it was not very paying but passion kept him hinged.
Like many journalists, he recalled a statement that got him recognition when he confessed that he was compromised with a bribe but noted that journalists are lured into such situations because of poor pay.
He joined mainstream media in 2008 at NBS and started Barometer. In 2011 he joined UBC and became acting TV manager until 2018 for Vision group.
He is currently the CEO of OwanaPaedia YouTube channel which is a historical Youtube channel and contributor to the Tarehe Sita magazine.
The Groove Cafe with Crystal Newman airs every Weekday from 4-5 pm on RX Radio.
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