Fay­ola KJ Fras­er

A read­er, writer, and sto­ry­teller, Ryan Ba­choo is the Lead Ed­i­tor–News­gath­er­ing, and co-an­chor for the 7 pm news on CNC3. As a mul­ti­me­dia jour­nal­ist, his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in­clude set­ting the dai­ly agen­da for the news, gen­er­at­ing sto­ry ideas, pro­duc­ing hu­man in­ter­est fea­tures, and pre­sent­ing the morn­ing show/prime time news. In his fam­i­ly of five, among his three sib­lings, his sis­ter was pin­point­ed to be a bud­ding jour­nal­ist dur­ing their child­hood. How­ev­er, as she chose a dif­fer­ent ca­reer path, Ba­choo emerged and went on to study jour­nal­ism.

Grow­ing up in a “small, clus­tered vac­u­um town” where every­thing is close-knit in­flu­enced Ba­choo’s per­spec­tive, style, and de­liv­ery of his me­dia prod­ucts. Be­ing from a small town stim­u­lat­ed his imag­i­na­tion, and gave him the op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­vi­sion even the small­est oc­cur­rences as sto­ries un­told. As a child and a young man, he was en­cour­aged by his par­ents to de­vel­op his imag­i­na­tion even fur­ther by read­ing books by Naipaul, Michael An­tho­ny, and Sam Selvon bring­ing his lived en­vi­ron­ment to life. Re­mem­ber­ing specif­i­cal­ly that his fa­ther in­sist­ed he read Michael An­tho­ny’s, “The Year In San Fer­nan­do” which de­tails the life of a 12-year-old boy spend­ing a year in the city work­ing with a fam­i­ly, he re­mem­bers vivid­ly the vi­brance of An­tho­ny’s sto­ry­telling im­mor­tal­is­ing and breath­ing life in­to the very city he came from.

Ba­choo has had a va­ri­ety of part-time roles in the me­dia, as a Com­mon­wealth Cor­re­spon­dent, and a So­cial Me­dia Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Of­fi­cer at Crick­et West In­dies, and in ad­di­tion to his present role as Lead Ed­i­tor at CNC3, he al­so an­chors in the Sports Desk. While study­ing Jour­nal­ism and Pub­lic Re­la­tions at the Ken Gor­don School of Jour­nal­ism, he be­gan drop­ping off his re­sume to var­i­ous me­dia hous­es, and in­stead of wait­ing and hop­ing for a call­back, he him­self called them to get feed­back. “I called CNC3 every sin­gle day us­ing the free phone line, 800-CNC3,” he laugh­ing­ly re­mem­bers, “I think they even­tu­al­ly got an­noyed and told me to come in.”

Re­mem­ber­ing his first day at CNC3 in 2010, a mem­o­rable date in­grained in his mind, on Ju­ly 27, he walked in­to the news­room at on­ly 20 years old. He was in­vit­ed as an un­paid in­tern at the sta­tion for one month and worked on the up­com­ing Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions. The rest of his ca­reer sto­ry was al­ready etched in the his­to­ry books, as he worked hard un­der Samp­son Nan­ton for the month, and was in­vit­ed to re­turn as a jour­nal­ist, nev­er work­ing for any oth­er me­dia house.

Most of Ba­choo’s in­ter­ests have re­mained the same since his child­hood. He is a pas­sion­ate sport fan and grew up in a fam­i­ly that loved sport. He played foot­ball, and crick­et and ran track & field, which set the foun­da­tion for his work on the Sport Desk. His read­ing and writ­ing which were en­cour­aged by his fa­ther dur­ing his child­hood re­main some of his favourite ac­tiv­i­ties, and he cites West In­di­an Fic­tion as his pre­ferred genre of nov­el. Ba­choo al­so cred­its his deep, pro­found spir­i­tu­al­i­ty as “an im­por­tant pil­lar of my life, and a guid­ing light to every­thing I seek to achieve for my­self”.

In ret­ro­spect, Ba­choo’s up­bring­ing along with his con­sis­tent ap­pli­ca­tion of his dogged de­ter­mi­na­tion have been ma­jor keys to his suc­cess­ful ca­reer in the me­dia. He has had sig­nif­i­cant high­lights in his ca­reer, such as re­port­ing for the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) on non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases, re­port­ing for the Chi­na In­ter­na­tion­al Pub­lish­ing Group on “Chi­na in the 21st cen­tu­ry”, and serv­ing as the Voice Tal­ent for At­lantic LNG Sport­ing Events since 2019. Ba­choo com­mis­er­ates fond­ly over these ac­com­plish­ments but en­sures he con­tin­ues to achieve and evolve. He has re­cent­ly been named the win­ner of the award for Best Caribbean Doc­u­men­tary Pro­gramme at the Caribbean Broad­cast­ing Union Awards in An­tigua for his doc­u­men­tary, “Con­cor­dat” about the strug­gle be­tween race, pow­er, and re­li­gion.

Af­ter 13 years at CNC3, Ba­choo has not on­ly de­vel­oped as a writer, re­porter, and an­chor, but has con­tin­ued to cu­rate the re­al­i­ty he al­ways dreamed of. The irony is nev­er lost on him that he begged for his chance to work at the sta­tion, but nev­er walked back out af­ter that first day. Mov­ing quick­ly through the ranks from in­tern to re­porter, to pro­duc­er, to an­chor at the sta­tion, he has been able to leave an in­deli­ble mark on CNC3 and bring the news­cast to view­ers with his unique­ly re­fined touch and the imag­i­na­tion and cre­ativ­i­ty of his small-town boy­hood.