Sirleaf founded the Daily Talk on May 14, 2000, during a period when Liberia was still reeling from the devastation of its first civil war. An inventor and father of three, he believed that a well-informed citizenry was the foundation of the country's recovery. In post-war Liberia, where reliable information was scarce and mistrust ran deep, Sirleaf saw his blackboard as something more than journalism. It was an act of civic faith. Behind the chalkboard stands a small wooden shed he calls the newsroom, where he gathers reports, composes stories, and selects the colored chalks that distinguish one topic from another. Yellow is reserved for numbers and prominent leaders. The rest of the palette shifts with the day's content. Each edition is wiped clean and rewritten by hand, a process that begins before dawn and ends when the last headline is chalked into place for the morning crowd.

Critical reporting carries consequences everywhere, but in Liberia under President Charles Taylor, the consequences were severe and personal. Just months after the Daily Talk first appeared, Sirleaf's coverage of Taylor's government landed him in jail. Government soldiers smashed the blackboard to pieces. Sirleaf fled into exile and spent years away from the boulevard that had become his press room, watching from a distance as Liberia's second civil war tore the country apart. He returned in 2005, after Taylor's ouster, and with help from fellow Monrovians, rebuilt the board just one week before the election that brought Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (no close relation) to the presidency. The timing was not coincidental. Alfred Sirleaf understood that Liberians needed trustworthy, accessible information precisely when the stakes were highest, and that the sidewalk was still the best place to deliver it.

The Daily Talk is written in Liberian English, the creole-influenced variety spoken on Monrovia's streets. But Sirleaf goes further, adding pictorial symbols so that those with limited literacy can follow the stories. The visual shorthand turns the blackboard into something closer to a mural than a newspaper, each day a new composition of color and line. Topics are color-coded, drawings anchor the meaning, and the physical act of reading becomes communal: clusters of passersby gather in front of the board to discuss what they see, argue about the headlines, and pass interpretation along to friends who arrive late. By 2010, Sirleaf relied on a network of roughly 200 volunteer correspondents scattered across the country, feeding him reports by phone. He receives no salary, supporting himself through occasional gifts from readers, taxi rides offered in gratitude, and prepaid cellphone cards. Al Jazeera, the BBC, CBS, NPR, and Deutsche Welle have all profiled his work, though Sirleaf's audience remains, first and always, the people standing on the sidewalk in front of him.

In 2018, a vehicle slammed into the blackboard and destroyed it again. This time, the response was international. U.S. Ambassador Christine A. Elder attended the reopening ceremony two months later, while USAID provided funding for reconstruction through the nonprofit Internews. Filmmaker David Lale once observed that while global media too often define Liberia in terms of civil war tragedy, the Daily Talk describes a busy, hopeful nation in the process of renewal. That distinction matters. The blackboard does not editorialize from a safe distance. It stands on a sidewalk in the capital, written by a man who was jailed for his words and came back to write more. In a media landscape shaped by algorithms and paywalls, Sirleaf's chalk marks offer something older and perhaps more durable: news that belongs to the street where it is read.