Inari Media has a really interesting post about the Nation Media Group. The article is worth a read, please have a look.
In case you haven’t read that article, it is about an article by Charles Onyango-Obbo (one of the big wigs at NMG) who wrote an article that lacked logic and should not have been published, much less by what many consider to be an authoritative newspaper. Inari concludes by saying, “this is the moment when Kenyan blogs became better than traditional media.”
Is this so? Where do you get your news, the Kenyan papers or Kenyan blogs and other sites? Which do you trust more?
Personally, I think the only reason why Kenyan newspapers, as they are, still survive is because a lot of the country still cannot access the Internet. When that happens, it’ll be definite doom. Why? Because our papers, to me, are seldom interesting. For example, I regularly go through the Daily Nation and I find only one or two articles that really really hold my interest. But I can go to Kenya Moja (which aggregates a lot of Kenyan sites and blog) and spend a couple of hours reading very interesting stuff written by passionate people (often experts in their fields).
Is Kenya’s traditional media doomed?
Thanks for the link love!
I think, as far as news is concerned, the traditional media groups in Kenya have been asleep at the wheel for a long time, and it has only been the lack of competition that has kept them going. As I said in my blog post, I skim the headlines, but I don’t rely on them for analysis any longer.
As more people gain internet access, whether via computer or through their phones, there is a good opportunity for a new media operation to capture a lot of audience share. Kenyan readers know that the state of the media is rotten; they just need to be offered a credible alternative.