About Muhywyi
Journalism taught by people who still do it
Muhywyi started in 2018 as a small experiment in Tuam, Co. Galway - a place to learn journalistic writing from practitioners who cover real stories, not from textbooks written a decade ago. That gap between classroom theory and newsroom reality is still what we're here to close.
see what we teach
Our background
Where the platform came from
Muhywyi grew out of a recurring frustration: aspiring journalists in Ireland had access to university programmes but very little access to working professionals who could show them how a story actually gets built - from the first phone call to the final edit. We wanted to fix that without replacing formal education, just filling the gap it leaves.
The problem we noticed
Most writing courses teach craft. Very few teach the decisions behind it.
Knowing how to write a clean sentence is not the same as knowing when to lead with a quote, how to structure a long-form investigation, or why an editor will cut your third paragraph before reading your fourth. Those judgements come from experience. We built Muhywyi so that experience could be passed on directly - in structured masterclasses, not abstract lectures.
working journalists and editors have contributed masterclass sessions on the platform
distinct writing disciplines covered, from breaking news to long-form narrative
Rooted locally
Built in Galway, used across Ireland
Our physical base in Tuam keeps us connected to regional journalism - a side of the industry that national programmes often overlook. Local reporting has its own craft and its own pressures, and we teach both.
The people behind the sessions
Each instructor brings a different corner of journalism - print, broadcast, digital, and investigative - into the platform's teaching.
Orla Fennelly
Platform Director / Lead Instructor
Orla spent fourteen years as a features editor at two national Irish publications before joining Muhywyi full-time. Her masterclasses focus on structure - how to take a sprawling set of notes and interviews and find the spine of a story that readers will actually follow. She is direct, occasionally blunt, and very good at identifying the sentence where a piece goes wrong.
Ciarán Ó Briain
Investigative Reporting
Ciarán covers public accountability stories for a regional outlet and teaches the practical side of document-based reporting - how to read a planning file, how to structure a FOI request, and how to write findings that are accurate without being impenetrable.
Saskia Brandt
Digital and Multimedia Writing
Saskia works across text and audio and brings a clear-eyed view of how writing changes when it lives online - not just SEO mechanics, but the genuine craft differences between a piece designed to be read on a screen versus one designed to be heard.
How sessions are structured
Every masterclass on Muhywyi follows a deliberate format - not a recording of someone talking at a camera for forty minutes, but a structured session with a specific skill at its centre. The format was developed after watching participants disengage from lecture-style content and stay engaged when given a concrete problem to work through.
A specific technique, not a broad topic
Each session is built around one clearly defined skill - writing a scene-setting opening paragraph, handling a denial from a source, cutting a 1,200-word draft to 800 without losing its argument. Broad topics get broken into individual sessions so nothing stays vague.
Real material from real assignments
Instructors use actual drafts, actual edits, and actual published pieces - including their own rejected work - to show what decisions look like in practice. No invented examples, no sanitised case studies.
Step-by-step, not overview
The session walks through a process in sequence - what happens first, what decision comes next, what to do when something goes wrong at step three. Participants leave with a usable sequence, not a general impression of what good journalism looks like.
Short enough to finish, dense enough to matter
Sessions run between 35 and 55 minutes. Long enough to go deep on one thing, short enough that a working journalist or a full-time student can fit it into an actual week without rescheduling everything around it.