Reintroducing The Debrief Network

Let me start with an apology. We’ve been very quiet on here. That silence was deliberate, and I hope it earns your patience rather than your frustration.

At the end of 2025, we made a conscious decision to step back. We needed time to properly understand the news ecosystem, to interrogate what The Debrief Network really is, what it should be, and what it could become.

When we started this platform last year, we knew we were experimenting. I didn’t yet have a clear sense of what we were building, but I knew I needed to deeply understand how news is being consumed right now. Not how it used to be consumed. Not how journalists wish it were consumed. How it actually is.

Over the past ten months, we tried everything. Some things worked, many didn’t, and all of it taught us something. This piece is not about celebrating wins. It is about reintroducing who we are and being honest about where we are headed.

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Last week, we officially resumed work after a short break, this time from our first physical space, The Debrief Labs. Building a creator hub is something I’ve obsessed over for a while because collaboration is at the heart of innovation. Thoughtfully designing a space where ideas can collide is not a luxury. It is part of the work.

So we gathered around the creator desk to map out 2026. Halfway through the session, I stopped the team and said, what if we scrap everything and start again. I was met with a few side-eyes.

Then I asked another question. What if we became to news what Capitec Bank became to banking in South Africa?

More side-eyes.

This is my hypothesis. Indulge me for a moment.

Here’s why I zoomed into this bank’s story. Capitec is the largest bank in South Africa by both customers and market value. With more than 20 million customers and R454 billion in value. Everyone can agree that this company is the biggest success story of the post-1994 South Africa.

From my research, I understand that when Capitec entered the banking sector, it didn’t try to out-bank the banks.

It asked a more uncomfortable question. Who has been excluded by complexity and is there any opportunity there?

The answer was millions of people who had money, lives, and ambitions, but didn’t see themselves reflected in banking designed for professionals and the already comfortable.

Capitec stripped banking down to what people actually needed. It spoke in plain language, priced transparently, and treated customers as adults rather than problems to be managed.

I was an early adopter for a simple reason. It gave me exactly what I needed, in a way that made sense to me, without unnecessary frills.

That same kind of disruption is urgently needed in news.

News today, much like banking once was, is designed primarily for people who already know how to use it. It assumes prior political knowledge and familiarity with jargon, institutions, and power structures.

For many people, especially younger audiences, working-class communities, and those overwhelmed by daily crises, news does not feel empowering. It feels exhausting.

That exhaustion is not apathy. It is alienation. And it explains why we are seeing a growing news avoidance problem.

Just as Capitec understood that people were not bad with money but underserved by the system, The Debrief Network has to recognise something similar. People are not bad with news. They have simply never been spoken to properly.

In journalism, simplicity does not mean dumbing down. It means clarity.

For us, that looks like:

• Explaining why something matters before explaining what happened

• Replacing institutional language with human language

• Prioritising clarity over cleverness

• Letting go of performative objectivity that obscures power

This is why I told the team that The Debrief’s real opportunity is to treat news as a service, not a performance.

A service answers the questions people are already asking:

• How does this affect my life?

• Who benefits from this decision?

• What am I supposed to do with this information?

I told the team that we might be wrong, but what if we designed journalism for:

• People who don’t read newspapers

• People who feel intimidated by politics

• People who get their news through WhatsApp, TikTok, or everyday conversation

The goal is not to be the smartest voice in the room. It is to be the clearest. The most trustworthy. The one people send to their family group chats because it finally makes sense.

So the obvious question is how we do that.

For us, it starts with:

• Explaining how reporting is done

• Being honest about what we don’t yet know

• Naming power clearly instead of hiding behind neutrality

• Showing audiences how to think, not what to think

The goal is for The Debrief to become a habit for people who currently live outside the news cycle.

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After a week of intense brainstorming, we landed on a few guiding principles for how we design our journalism. The most important of these is service.

A service mindset asks:

• What problem is this solving in someone’s life today?

• What confusion are we clearing up?

• What power imbalance are we exposing?

• What decision does this help someone make?

We agreed that news often fails people not because of what it reports, but because of how it speaks. We are committing to being conscious of this every day.

And finally, we agreed on something fundamental. Platforms are not an afterthought.

If our audience lives on WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, or here on Substack, then that is where our newsroom goes.

So welcome to The Debrief Network in 2026. We are glad you’re here.

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This only works if you find value in what we do. Help us help you. Share our journalism, talk about it, and come on this journey with us.