When Everyone Has A Take, Who Tells The Story?

Every generation seems convinced that journalism is living through its final chapter. Every technological shift seems to inspire another prediction that the profession has reached its end. First came the internet, then social media, followed by shrinking newsrooms, collapsing advertising revenues and dwindling attention spans.

Now the latest threat is artificial intelligence, with headlines asking whether machines will soon replace reporters altogether. And yet, young journalists continue to choose the profession anyway. Zainab Nasreen Muhammad is one of them, a voice representing a new generation of journalists who grew up on social media. At Culture Custodian, she reports on politics and pop culture.

While many are questioning journalism’s future, she’s focused on how it can continue to matter in a world with rapid technological and political changes.

Have you always known you wanted to become a journalist?

I think I’ve always wanted to do something creative. When I was in Primary One, I wanted to be an artist. By Primary Three or Four, that had changed to journalism. I was always watching CNN, my dad encouraged my writing, and I never stopped asking questions. People would always say, “You’d make a good journalist.” My primary school teacher even started a press club because of me. I interviewed people around the school, and looking back, I think I’ve known since I was about eight that this was what I wanted to do.

There was a brief period when I considered studying Economics because everyone asks the same question: How are you going to make money? But nothing else excited me the way journalism did. When I chose Mass Communication, some of my teachers were disappointed. Thankfully, my family never questioned the decision. They knew journalism wasn’t just an interest, it was the career I wanted.

What did your first newsroom teach you about journalism and about the industry itself?

By the time I graduated, journalism no longer felt mysterious because I’d already spent every university holiday working in a newsroom. My first internship came before my second year, so by graduation I’d met journalists, understood newsroom routines and had a fairly realistic picture of the profession. The real adjustment wasn’t journalism itself, it was working full-time. My first newsroom internship was difficult because people expected me to already know what I was doing.

There wasn’t much room to ask basic questions, and that was hard. But I don’t think that’s unique to journalism. It’s something a lot of young professionals experience. People are busy, deadlines are constant and everyone expects you to learn quickly. Newsrooms move incredibly fast now. Everyone has deadlines to meet, stories to file and meetings to attend, so very few people have the time to sit down and properly teach interns the ropes. A lot of young journalists end up figuring things out on their own. It makes me wonder what journalism will look like when my generation becomes editors and newsroom leaders.

People often say journalism is a dying profession. As someone at the beginning of your career, what do you think?

I don’t think journalism is dying. I think it’s changing. I’ve always been politically aware, even as a child, and I want more young people to care about current affairs. But the way we introduce them to the news has to evolve. Most young people aren’t buying newspapers anymore. They’re discovering information through social media. Whether journalists like it or not, that’s where audiences are, so that’s where we have to meet them. Journalism today isn’t just about writing a great story. You also have to think about how people will find it.

For many young people, social media is a distraction. How do you use it as a reporting tool?

I’ve been online for as long as I can remember. I got access to the internet before I was ten, so being online has always felt normal to me. People assume that means it’s a distraction. I don’t. As a journalist, the internet is one of the best places to observe people. It’s where conversations begin, where public opinion is shaped and culture unfolds in real time.

I follow more than 3,500 accounts on Instagram, and that’s very deliberate. It gives me a window into communities and perspectives I wouldn’t otherwise encounter. Journalists are observers. The internet just happens to be one of the biggest places where people reveal themselves.

Artificial intelligence is changing the newsroom. What’s your take on the use of AI in journalism?

I always compare the brain to a muscle. You spend your entire life strengthening it by reading, writing and thinking. Then AI arrives. If you let it do all the heavy lifting, eventually that muscle weakens. One day you’ll have to write something with nothing but a pen and paper, and you’ll realise you’ve stopped exercising the very skill your work depends on. That’s the danger. I use AI almost every day, but mostly for practical things like organising ideas or checking whether a paragraph works. I never want AI to replace the thinking. It should support your work, not become your work.

What has helped you improve the most as a writer?

Reading comes first. Not just reading a lot, but paying attention to why a sentence or style works. The more I write, the more I understand that. Working at Culture Custodian has challenged me more than anywhere else I’ve worked. It’s changed how I think about reporting, how I pitch stories and even how I edit myself before anyone else sees my work. A huge part of that has been having an editor I trust. When I first joined, my drafts came back covered in comments.

Now it’s usually one or two notes, and that’s because I studied every edit. I didn’t just correct the story; I tried to understand why the change had been made so I wouldn’t repeat the same mistake. I’ve also experienced the opposite. I’ve worked with editors whose corrections actually made my work worse, and it’s difficult to grow when you don’t trust the person editing your work. I used to joke that I wanted to work under a strict editor who would push me and make me better. Looking back, I got exactly what I wished for and i’m grateful for that/

You said you’ve always been politically aware, and much of your work engages with politics. Why do you think political awareness matters, especially for young people?

I’ve always been politically aware. Even as a child, I paid attention to what was happening around me. There’s a saying I always come back to: You may not do politics, but politics will do you. Everything is political. Whether Abuja floods. Whether there’s electricity. Whether water comes out of your tap. Whether schools and hospitals work. Politics shapes everyday life, whether we choose to pay attention or not. I don’t understand how anyone can live somewhere and not care about how it’s governed.

It’s like living in a house without understanding the rules that keep it standing. I also think the world is changing. Young people in different countries are becoming more engaged, organising, protesting and demanding better. Nigerian youth have that same potential, but we need to become more aware, more curious and less passive about what’s happening around us. The systems that fail people often depend on people believing nothing can change.

I refuse to accept that. Hope isn’t passive, it’s something you choose to practice by voting, joining political parties and starting important conversations.

Some people see arts and entertainment journalism as less serious. Why do you think arts and culture stories matter, especially to young people?

I think art is part of life, and the things we listen to, watch and experience shape us as human beings. They deserve to be documented and archived. Twenty years from now, we should be able to look back and know what people were listening to, watching and talking about in 2026. Art is life, and all parts of life have to be documented.

Looking ahead, what kind of journalist do you hope to become?

I want to spend more time reporting in the field. I want to travel more, meet people where they are and tell stories that come directly from lived experience. Right now, I’m interested in reporting on issues like the mass weddings in Kano and maternal mortality in northern Nigeria. Those are stories that deserve more sustained attention. Long-term, I’d like to become an editor. Eventually, I want to start my own publication I’m also hoping to get into the masters in journalism program at Columbia university. At the heart of all those ambitions is the same goal: to keep telling stories that matter and to keep finding better ways to tell them