Kayla Olaya
Kayla Olaya reports on contemporary culture, focusing on how entertainment, social media and everyday life intersect. She is a culture reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald. Her work spans news, features and opinion pieces that centre the people and communities behind cultural stories.
Culture, celebrity and everyday life
Olaya covers high-profile entertainment figures with an emphasis on the human and health dimensions of their stories, as in her report on former Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson revealing a cancer diagnosis. She writes about intimate relationship expectations and gender roles, including a first-person culture piece on explaining to a 24-year-old man why she did not want to be a “trad wife.” Across this work she uses accessible language and concrete examples from everyday life to connect celebrity and cultural debate back to readers’ own experiences.
Social media trends and online fame
A significant strand of Olaya’s reporting examines how platforms such as TikTok and Instagram shape behaviour, risk and status. She has chronicled the rise of Run It Straight, following a group of friends who turned a schoolyard game into an organised competition that became a social media sensation.
In companion pieces she has explored the dangers of the craze, reporting both medical experts’ warnings that participation “will result in death” and contestants’ insistence that they feel “blessed” to compete.
Her work also tracks broader shifts in online culture, including opinion coverage of TikTok trends moving from “mob wife” aesthetics to MAGA-flavoured content as those fashions lose momentum. She profiles creators whose audiences explode overnight, such as a book-focused TikTok account that attracted more than 100,000 followers within days, treating sudden online fame as a social phenomenon rather than pure entertainment.
Nightlife and youth culture
Olaya devotes recurring attention to nightlife and youth-led cultural scenes, often working in partnership with photographers to document these spaces.
She has produced a series of features on nightlife, including a piece describing how the city’s nightlife has been “rewired” and how the music has “never sounded better,” built around community-led gig guides and the organisers behind them. In describing this work she highlights reporting that follows peers across multiple neighbourhoods and venues, suggesting a ground-level approach that prioritises emerging creatives and grassroots organisers over major institutions.
Her role as guide for a live blog of the Archibald Prize, alongside specialist arts colleagues, extends this interest in cultural events from music venues to one of the country’s premier portrait prizes.
Health, science and consumer concerns
Before joining the Sydney Morning Herald, Olaya wrote health and science journalism for MedNews during her studies, building familiarity with evidence-based reporting. That background continues to surface in her work through service-oriented stories, such as a feature on sunscreen myths that urges readers to rethink common SPF misconceptions in a country with high melanoma rates. She has also reported on consumer and legal issues around medicine, including a piece on a looming class action for popular over-the-counter drugs being investigated over alleged links to serious health harms.
Together, these articles show a reporter comfortable moving from culture and entertainment into health and consumer territory when those issues intersect with everyday lives.
Role within the Herald
Olaya joined the Sydney Morning Herald as part of a cohort of trainee journalists, later taking on the culture reporter role. She is identified internally and externally as a culture reporter, contributing to panels and newsroom events that discuss skills and pathways into the industry. Her trajectory from health and science reporting to culture coverage, and her mix of news, opinion and live blogs, positions her within the masthead as a versatile journalist focused on the social impact of entertainment, online trends and lifestyle choices.
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Ailish Delaney
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Alexandra Del Rosario
Alexandra Del Rosario anchors fast-turn entertainment and culture coverage at the Los Angeles Times Fast Break Desk. She reports breaking news across film, television, music and online celebrity culture, with a real beat at the intersection of celebrities, courts and controversies. Her work covers legal filings, arrests, lawsuits, allegations, social media posts, ratings, casting news and personal milestones, and she also writes on video games and Asian American and Pacific Islander representation in media. She reports in clear, compact summaries that put the key facts first, then add context from a subject’s career, roles or industry trends. Before the Los Angeles Times, she covered TV ratings, casting and development at Deadline and served as an associate editor, with additional experience at The Hollywood Reporter and TheWrap.
Amy Lyall
Amy Lyall combines fast-paced celebrity and reality TV coverage with first-person lifestyle and money writing across Nine’s digital platforms. She is an associate entertainment editor at Nine, setting the daily agenda for celebrity, reality formats and movie stories while also reporting. Her beat centres on celebrity relationships, rumours and personal milestones, tracking long-running speculation through to confirmed updates and public discussions of grief and loss. Reality TV is a second focus, following couples and personalities beyond the shows themselves. Alongside this she writes Spend Less, Live More, a recurring lifestyle money series for 9Honey that uses her own budgeting and household habits to show practical ways to save. Her archive also includes wellbeing and relationships pieces and explainer features on language and everyday culture, including terms, names and how people use them.