I Can No Longer Read Kenyan Papers
I was trying to read an article in the Standard yesterday and I just couldn’t figure out what the hell the author of the article was trying to say. So, I switched to the Nation, hoping that I’d find better written articles there and I ran into the same problem — I couldn’t figure out what the hell the author was trying to say.
My initial reaction to this frustration was that the writers are under extreme word count pressure — i.e. they are trying to squeeze in a whole lot of information into an editor prescribed word limit and they are unable to do it. Then, what ends up happening is that you get a bumbled article that fails to provide facts, which would be important to a readers understanding of the subject matter being written about.
Now, before I proceed with this rant, I will say that there is one exception to this rule of bad writing and her name is Lucy Oriang. She is a very good writer and I am able to follow her editorial pieces very easily. However, other than Oriang, there’s just no one else.
I understand that professional writing can be very difficult, mainly because it requires some experience and lots and lots of editing. While I have never been a professional writer myself, I have written numerous papers in school that required me to do lots and lots of editing, which I always, always, hated. Editing is a slow, hard and painful process, but it’s absolutely necessary if you want to end up with a readable piece of work. I think the Kenyan dailies need to really, really, work on their editing and when I say editing, I don’t just mean checking for grammatical errors. I think they need to work on the entire editorial process, which I presume would involve things like story selection — i.e. which important stories can be excluded from an extreme word count so that the reader can end up with an in-depth understanding of the subject matter.
Is anyone else encountering this problem? because it’s becoming worse and worse.
Discuss…..
bones, muscle, skin in that order, leave off warts and carbuncles?
Or
warts and carbuncles and leave off skin, muscle and bone?
Or maybe just one word instead of ten pictures
or
one picture instead of ten words
yep see what you mean,
Or
Do I
@ KE,
I disagree. It’s not just bad writing, it’s simply HORRIBLE!
I no longer “read” these local rags. Just skim through the headlines and one or 2 paragraphs to get the essense of the story then I move on.
I’ve been reduced to doing the same thing: Reading the headline and then the first paragraph and moving on (because if I proceed, I will just become more confused).
It’s really quite unfortunate because with internet access growing exponentially, you can now read the world’s best papers {for free} from any country in the world. I don’t understand why Kenyan journalists and or editors are not doing this –i.e. reading papers like the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal both for the expansion of their general knowledge, but also to give them a sense of how good writing should be structured.
The other problem that may be occurring is that schools and universities are no longer teaching students how to write. There’s a tendency in Kenya to look down upon subjects that don’t {at first sight} seem to have any practical value and writing may be one of those subjects that is looked down upon, but after reading these papers, I’m beginning to realize that maybe it’s a skill that needs to be taken more seriously.
The other thing it’s done for me is make me realize that maybe liberal arts subjects like history and English are important after all. They may not give you practical skills like a engineering degree, but if you go to college in America and major in one of these subjects, you will leave school with much better writing skills.
And learning how to write is not easy. It’s a skill that HAS to be taught. I myself was forced to learn how to do it because I took so many liberal arts classes where I was required to write 40 and 50 page papers continuously.
However, before you could turn in a 40 page paper, you first had to write a short, 2 page paper so the professor could assess your writing skills and writing short papers is much harder than writing long papers because you don’t have room to go on endlessly about nothing. You have to focus and zone in on an issue and the way you do this is by learning the techniques of good writing. There is a technique to it and once you learn it, writing does become very easy and you will become good at it, but it takes a few years to learn and lots of practice, practice, practice…..
The bottom line is: It’s a skill that has to be taught and there’s no quick way to learning it. Someone literally has to sit down with you, read your work, point out your mistakes, tell you how to correct them and force you to re-write a piece over and over again until you get it.
Philip Ochieng & Sunny Bindra are some of the bright spots…
BTW, even BDA – a ‘premium’ paper – & East African suffer similar flaws!
What do you want from a people who think you can be “brother to” someone? Might the roots be somewhere in the start of the 8-4-4 system? Or is the bad writing simply yet another symptom of our rotting core? Maybe it’s time to abandon this language that came by ship, and focus on swa (assuming that it’s about the language and not about the writing technique)?
The standards of writing in the national dailies are appalling. I wonder if it has anything to do with cutbacks at the editorial level?
What many people don’t realise is that journalists might have only rudimentary writing skills, but it is the sub-editors who actually clean up their copy and make it comprehensible, along with writing the actual headlines. Journalists only have to chase up a story; it’s the subs and editors who actually transform it into what we read.
The Nation Media Group has recently dismissed around 100 newsroom staff. If they are not going to be replaced, I imagine that their publications will only improve as lining for kitty litter trays, but not as reading material. I can’t comment too much on quality within the Standard newsroom, because I haven’t been pointing out their failures as much.
And how difficult is it to write, really? It is very easy to provide coherent information that readers can digest easily. What is more difficult is providing the information without hints of management bias or personal prejudice, which is something that I continually notice.
Inari:
It’s actually not that easy to write, especially if you are trying to do it professionally.
Also, like I pointed out previously, writing short articles is actually much more difficult than writing a 50 page paper because with a short article, you only have a limited amount of space and you really have to find a way to summarize all the salient points in a way that will still make the article understandable for the reader. The only way to do this is to first, write a long draft of the article with all the information and then, slowly re-read the article and begin to edit it down to the point where it will still make sense.
I was going through an article in the Nation today and I’ve noticed what might be one of the fundamental problems and it involves throwing in a bunch of quotes all over the freaking article without any sense of organization about where they should be placed.
This is why writing is not that easy because sometimes you have to sit there and edit {even a 3 page paper} 5, 10 or 15 times before you get it right!
At some level, a lot of this is just laziness.
I agree.
Ever tried reading articles on CNN online, BBC or New York Times? The articles there are just written presented. Unlike what you find in our local ‘main’ newspapers.
Some opinion columnists do write really well however, I do point out Mutahi Ngunyi, Rasna Warah and even Charles Obbo. And yes, I agree that Lucy Oriang’s articles are very well written.
Nice Topic,
Kenya Entrepreneur it interesting but i do the same thing you said, ‘ Read the headline and first paragraph’.
Any political journalist who does not have a strong background in History is not worth to read.
I don’t mind if your grammar is not excellent… The case any political writer makes has to be based on what happened in the past then you have .. something to talk about..
You see its funny, a times i feel like Kenyan journalists live in a world of their own. The journalist don’t even seem to understand themselves let alone History..
Whats even more traumatizing is when you have people with Phd’s writing substandard articles on a national newspaper… You see Kenyan Editors are very arrogant … One thing they never take positive criticism and as soon as they get the Editors job their pride and arrogance cannot allow them to borrow a leaf from their western counterparts… Its a very unfortunate situation.
The solution i guess is to bring in a no nonsense Editor who will inject some much needed sanity in these media houses…
I used to love reading from a Ugandan journalist who wrote for the Nation on Sundays… On the same piece the dude from London wrote every Sunday..
The problem is not a lack of writing skills in Kenya, or 8-4-4 or lack of editors in the newsroom. The problems afflicting Kenyan dailies are those which are ruining the country: corruption, tribalism, nepotism and sexual favours. People are getting jobs as reporters and editors on the basis of connections rather than skill. So-called ‘celebs’ are being employed at the expense of trained journalists. What do you expect? The bosses at media houses don’t spend their time, as you suggest, looking at international newspapers so as to improve on their publications. Instead, they are busy strategizing on how to make more and more money which they use to seduce/intimidate juniour staff. Kenyan media is reeeeaaaalllllyy sick and their rottenness is reflected in the output of their work.
Mediocrity is what I would call it. Standards that are below below average.
On a positive note though, vernacular broadcast media seems to be doing very well. I listened to a some Kikuyu and Swahili stations when I was last in Kenya and I was impressed by the subject matter and presentation. Really good.
Perhaps as someone has suggested above, it may be a good idea to concentrate on local languages.
It is good to know that I am not the only one who thinks that Kenyan Newspapers are mediocre. I stopped reading them a long time ago.
Their articles are not only written in poor English; they also lack substance, obey no writing-style, are poorly (if ever) edited, and are full of contradictions. For example, in one article you may find different numbers cited for, say, the registered M-Pesa users.
Good writing is mechanical. That is to say that it must be organized clearly to cue the reader. Woe unto you if you try looking for a thesis statement or a conclusion in these Kenyan newspaper articles.
To me, there is only one exception. That man is Phillip Ochieng. His writing is excellent, and in fact comparable to OpEd writers of the New York Times.
Yes, I enjoy reading the New York Times. But the “Times” also realizes that good writing is not easy—that’s why their editors use the “New York Times Manual of Style.”
If they want to woo me back, these Kenyan Newspapers must “style” up!
Then there is the Leftist slant – really propaganda – of both Kenya papers (DN and STD). The other day I had to actually go to the gov. website to understand the noise about “Media Law”. Unbelievable as it sounds, the Kenya Gov. website is now part of my Kenya news diet. As much as I dislike the Kibaki Gov. I think the media is worse when it comes to the interest of Kenyans.
Inari’s onto something: both main papers are sub-edited exceptionally badly. That’s unlikely to be a direct result of the recent cuts, because it was prevalent before them; no doubt it’ll get worse.
I can’t see Philip Ochieng’s merits: he occasionally offers insight but there’s too much pedantry to wade through. That said, his longer writing is far better than his columns, maybe he should cut back to a monthly piece and write a memoir.
What Philip Ochieng has always lacked – the ability to make a case pithily – Kwendo Opanga has always had. During his purple patch in the 90s, Opanga was the best political journalist Kenya has ever seen; lets hope he can return to that sort of form.
KimX:
God bless your soul.
I can see someone taught you about the technique of writing (thesis statements, conclusions, etc, etc). I was going to talk about this technique in my piece more extensively, but decided not to, hoping of course, that the discussion would veer towards this issue and it has
If you go to a good high school in America, you will learn the technique there. However, if like me, you never got to learn it in high school, you should learn it in college.
I did not learn this technique in a writing class. I learned it in a sociology class. The professor became so frustrated at our inability to write well, that she effectively turned that class into a writing class. Yes, we were writing about sociological issues, but that became secondary to learning the technique.
Let me try and summarize this technique for the poor writers at the Nation and Standard since the editors have refused to help them out:
1)First, you begin with a thesis statement or introductory paragraph that will summarize for the reader, what the body of your essay is going to talk about.
2) Here, you take each of the summarized points that you mentioned in the introductory paragraph and you begin to expound on them, point by point, by point. So, each separate point should have it’s own paragraph.
3) Then, you don’t just leave the reader hanging when you are done. You should provide a conclusion where you state an outcome based on all the issues, which you raised in the main body.
The thesis statement or introductory paragraph, should actually be written last because it is easier to write a summary paragraph when you already know what the main body of work will include.
Essentially, what you are trying to do is create a road map of your thoughts so that you end up with a structured, orderly piece of work.
This technique looks simple, but it’s not — why? because the only way to learn it is by doing numerous rough drafts and numerous edits of everything you write. However, eventually, it’ll become like second nature and your need to edit everything will be drastically reduced and that is when your writing will improve.
I used to think I was the only one suffering the same problem. I tried reading an article on Saturday’s Daily Nation and I ended up being even more frustrated than informed. The writer would start a point, a few words later, jump onto something totally different and blabber on without making any sense using some weird grammar. There’s this pressure for writers to do articles that pull in a particular clique of readers. The clique is mainly made up of fresh college graduands and flashy corporate personnel. What this does is that the writers end up using alot of street English in newspapers thereby locking up other readers not necessarily within these cliques.
Another point to note is the faltering of grammar, spelling and sentence constructions which deviate from the standards established. Many a times I have had to fight with people writing out sentences in a manner like “am reading a book” as opposed to “I’m reading a book” and insist on how correct their sentence is. Sometimes it’s interchanging words like “this” and “these” or even losing meaning of “they”, “their”, “there” when they mean “they’re”
However most of these bad habits were not in plenty before the advent of cell phones which drove people into a frenzy of shortening words with text lingo. This compounded with the fact that students freely use cellphones in schools has messed up grammatical standards even more. This same bunch of students is what is being recruited into media houses thereby ending up with mediocre articles.
Nw whr’s my 4ne? I nd 2 rite a txt.
Im sorry pocahontas … for you to suggest cell phones are the cause of bad writing with Kenyan Newspapers…. Is a lame excuse..
I mean common… Not even a high school teacher will take that for an excuse… dahh !!
Thanks Kenyanentrepreneur for your compliments,
I actually went through the Kenyan education system where they don’t (or they pretend to) teach writing and grammar. I toiled on my own to learn good writing techniques, to meet the expected graduate school standards in the US. And man, I love good writing.
Check this New York Times weekly blog on grammar, usage, and style:
http://topics.blogs.nytimes.co.....-deadline/
And another thing that really annoys me about Kenyan media is their lack of patriotism to their country and region.
Many of them are loyal to their ethnic origins ignoring the big picture of nationalism and internationalism.
I am appalled to see even cartoonists of long standing such as Madd caricaturing their fellow Africans in a bad light while at the time worshipping everything foreign or western.
They are truly myopic.
Did I hit a raw nerve, Riaga? My point is not about cellphones being the ‘main’, cause but rather a contributing factor. I’ve come across many a newspaper article where the writers deviate from using some full words in sentence construction and instead substitute that with text lingo. That is also highly prevalent on ticker text that comes on during news broadcasts. You see overusing text services takes someone away from established rules of grammar and this slowly creeps in to one’s official communication. Just missing out a simple apostrophe can change the meaning of a sentence completely. In text you may not want to use apostrophes since you want to compress a message into 160 characters, you do that on a comp and a spell checker kicks in and changes the meaning of a word. For example “who’s” and “whose” are two words with very different meanings, miss out the apostrophe and some word editor will slap in the “E” as a correction.
I know you might want to still claim that my arguments hold very little water, but I don’t think some of these grammatical problems existed before the widespread use of cell phones and textese.
@daniel.waweru
Kwendo Opanga can write but he lost all my respect when it was revealed that he was actually in the pay of KANU during the 90s. Can you believe that? A journalist of Kwendo Opanga’s calibre taking bribes from the repressive KANU regime of the 90s.
I would find it very hard to trust any Kenyan journalist to give an objective opinion – after the Kwendo Opanga saga.
Kenyan ‘journalists’ constantly use:
loose when they mean lose e.g. He was the looser in the election…
whooping when they mean whopping e.g. KCB might write off a whooping two billion…
Or KCB will loose a whooping… LOL… let a whooping loose?
Riaga:
There have been many suggestions that text messaging is leading to poor writing skills, especially amongst teens who spend a lot of time “texting” their friends and using all kinds of abbreviations which are not grammatically correct in more formal writing settings, but maybe necessary just for short texts. I believe there was a specific article in the New York Times once about this problem, so don’t dismiss it outright.
Kei O:
One could argue that journalists in Kenya who spend their time exposing the corruption of these public officials are in fact performing a very important patriotic duty. The job of a journalist is not to support a government’s causes. It is to inform the public about what their government officials are doing. In the instances where mistakes are made in their reporting, the government has a few avenues of redress. They can call a press conference and refute the information, they can challenge the media houses to a debate of the issues or if it gets personal, they can sue newspapers in court for defamation.
KimX:
It’s interesting that you learned how to write when you came to graduate school in America. There is an enormous amount of writing required for those who choose to take liberal arts classes.
On the issue of patriotism, I think Kei O is talking from a very different angle from what you are looking at. Exposing corruption scandals without involving international parties is good for the country. However when it involves these other countries, it’s a different ball game altogether. Case in point, when pirates captured a ship destined for Kenya and the issue of ownership arose, the media decided to go flat out in exposing the country to factors that would have had negative effects.
When the issue of ownership begun involving the Southern Sudan government, the media should have shut up. Instead, they saw an opportunity to make money, what they did after was totally foolish. Exposing information that put Kenya in the scrutiny of the UN and even suggesting sanctions was totally uncalled for. When sanctions are placed on the country, it’s not the politicians who suffer. Instead it’s the citizens who were never involved that bear the brunt of such actions.
What the media always forget is that after 5pm, the PRESS badge goes off and they become just like any other common person, all suffering endured by others now hits them likewise.
I guess the reason why would’nt see text messaging to be the problem… Is because I don’t use short text.
I don’t know about you man, but most writers use miscrosoft word. It got spell check, and the last time I left Kenya ms-word was a popular thing.
I thought you guys were talking about the whole cohesion of writers thoughts in the article.
I did’nt know you were talking about spell check. Good luck if you think thats the problem.
Pocahontas: The gov’t lied to us… yes, that is the problem. And the beneficiaries of the arms sales was not Kenya but a select few…
It is ingenious to say ‘dont involve foreigners’… the ship was in foreign waters, the ship & goods owned by foreigners, sold by foreigners, etc… these are WEAPONS…
And the idiot wetangula claimed GOSS stands for some division of DOD that DOD had not heard of… LOL… Wow… I had no idea Kenya had a “Delta Force” that required 2nd hand tanks!
Pocahontas: The gov’t lied to us… yes, that is the problem. And the beneficiaries of the arms sales was not Kenya but a select few…
It is ingenious to say ‘dont involve foreigners’… the ship was in foreign waters, the ship & goods owned by foreigners, sold by foreigners, etc… these are WEAPONS…
And the idiot wetangula claimed GOSS stands for some division of DOD that DOD had not heard of… LOL… Wow… I had no idea Kenya had a “Delta Force” that required 2nd hand tanks!
Another DN faux pas:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=15803960&postID=5808758293972687293
KE
I am not against the exposure of corrupt public officials. That is a good thing. My point is wider than that. Even then, I believe that most Kenyan journalists receive bribes from politicians to cover their events or even to expose their rivals. They are not motivated by national interest. They are driven by petty agendas of tribalism, greed and vendetta. This is why I said that they are not objective.
On the wider issue of patriotism, many a time have I read articles promoting stereotypes against Kenyans or Africans in general. They can do a lot of good by promoting the positive aspects of Kenya even as they deal with the negative aspects.
They can create Kenyan heros and heroines. This is their role. But no! Not the Kenyan press. They are still quoting Aristotle and Plato and Churchill and Washington and Mao in this day and age when we have our own unsung heros and heroines.
I have still not understood why they gave so much coverage to war-mongers in the run up to the election in 2007. This was clearly part of the reason why there was violence. It is their patriotic duty to give blackouts to nincompoops and dangerous demagogues who masquerade as national leaders. Once in a while you see a sober editor’s opinion but by then the damage has already been done. In any case, who bothers to read the editor’s opinion?
I do not feel sorry for them even if they are gagged by a dictatorial regime. They have utterly failed in their role.
Coldtusker
LOL … Whooping loose!
ALL
If you cannot read the DN or STD then please there is still the people and the Times for you…There are quite a number of others……….MORE so this should be a NICHE for you to START your own press where you can WRITE SENSE
CT
Forget about phrases and such things….WOW! am impressed by your PREDICTIVE and BRAVE pieces which amazingly come to pass..(The OIL one being the latest) .Why not do a blog that is easy to reply to like this KE ONE…am serious
You still wonder why writing skills are going down? When you get such posts like Lord just did where you have to read some words twice to reconstruct a sentence in your head just to get the desired meaning. Rubbishing off what you might consider to be “elitist” and asking others to consider other news segments just because you don’t understand the issue in discussion is a typical “Ostrich in head in the sand” scenario. I bet that’s another hard one. I wonder if DN will ever explain the meaning of that phrase. What more, such statements like Lord’s just exposes the level of ignorance ingrained in some quarters.
Riaga
The point I had when bringing in the issue of “textese” is really about cohesion. How this comes out is when a writer does “textese” in a word processor which will naturally kick in and try to auto-correct what it sees as wrong. This process ends up putting in some words which convey no sense in the context they are used and I used an example of “who’s” and “whose” another example would be “now” and “new”. Moreover, the writing style that one uses on text – even with proper spellings – cannot be the same one that is (should be) used in a Newspaper. On text, there is really no great need for cohesion.
There are still other rules of language that would need to be observed to come up with a proper article. For instance, one is encouraged to form sentences using a positive analogy as opposed to a negative one. These two sentences mean the same thing, but the negative one comes out more strongly as pessimistic :
> That car is not so bad.
> That car is good.
In informal discussions, it’s a go for either, formally, uhmm, there are reservations.
CT
Granted, the government lied but the media shouldn’t have taken the approach it took by even trying to push the matter with foreign governments as if trying to push for sanctions to be placed on the Kenyan government. That act is what I describe to as unpatriotic.
Pocahontas: I am confused… coz what I figure is… if the Kenyan govt didn’t lie to us… the Kenyan gov’t or its officers didn’t engage in arms trafficking… then there would be no need to complain to anyone… let alone foreign governments?
Or am I getting it wrong?
Lord: What do you mean ‘easy to reply to’? Please help me out here… Thanx!
Pocahontas: And what’s your take on the KPC-Triton saga where; (all stories on my blog http://www.coldtusker.blogspot.com)
- Consumers blamed by PS for panic buying (WTF did he expect when there was no fuel for days?)
- Oil Marketers blamed for hoarding fuel (what were they hoarding? Air? Coz there was no fuel being delivered. Ask Engen)
- KPC blamed KPLC (KPC told them to go buy a voltage stabilizer & generator like any other Kenyan industrial firm)
- KPC published false information to mislead Kenyans (in the papers & even on interviews)
- PM, ministers & prez blames OMs not KPC (the PM is in India… meeting with Devani? Or eating humble pie?)
Is your gov’t (I can’t call it mine… it does NOT represent my interests)… a pathological liar?
Agree, but like Rasna Warah, Mutahi Ngunyi and Charles Obbo. My all-time favorite is Macharia Gaitho’s piece “Our man in Washington must demand Dubya’s resignation” http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/O.....index.html. Now focus on guest writers like Koigi wa Wamwere. The upside is discovering online-only newspapers like Kenya Times Online and Nairobi Chronicle. Have not yet formed an opinion, but find them refreshingly different from mainstream media.
CT
My point s not really about the process of exposing the ill deeds covered at that the time in question. It’s more about the end result – Sanctions. We can’t afford to go the Iraqi or Libyan way. At least those countries have oil that they could export on the black market, what can Kenya export? Horticulture to the EU? an organization that would definitely be involved in placing the sanctions. Or how about tourism to the same region inclusive of America? Picture this other situation, last night I hear some Tv stations aired footage of a cop who had been injured9or perhaps killed) following a shoot out with thugs. Is this the kind of picture you would want to portray to citizens? The only person who can protect them is displayed as powerless. That gives the thugs even more vigor to wage a war and hopelessness to creep in on thr citizens, images like this do not help the country at all and would need to be censored. My cry to Kibaki, enforce the ICT bill especially Section 88.
NaturalSceptic
I believe the reason why Gaitho can come up with a spectacular piece like the one mentioned is because he is a seasoned writer unlike the new comers on the ground. More so, he does not fear using strong vocabulary. That brings out more on his writing prowess. What we have in Kenya are some fresh graduates who are hired more for their looks than skills and giving them critical tasks like writing major articles. I’d say, put these in other tasks like investigating low key events. let ‘em report on kiosk demolitions by City councils and maybe they can pick up from their.
On the other side of the coin though we have seasoned journalists who still have an opinionated mindset when reporting news. I hate it when some news anchors like KTN’s Njoroge Mwaura has to finish a disturbing story with some emotional sentiments like “a really sad story”. My advise to him and his cronies, keep your emotions at home, or at least refrain form anchoring on a day that has some major story.
This also reminds me of one Larry Madowo who puts in an excruciatingly long pause when reading out his name after finishing a report. Most of the time I always have to add in the “F” word after he reads out his name and just before he does his last name. yeah, the pause is that long. I wonder where these people get ideas that such moves are cool. If it indeed is, woe unto the next generation.
If one is going to become a tv journalist, it is okay (in fact, even necessary) to take their looks into account. I would actually say that they have done this quite well when it comes to finding attractive female presenters, but they need to dramatically improve their auditions when it comes to finding more attractive male presenters.
Zain Verjee didn’t get to be on CNN just because she was a “good” reporter. She had the looks.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta is another good example. A young, good looking doctor with a perfect face for television.
So, when it comes to tv news “readers” (lets not kid ourselves by calling them reporters)…shallowness is a welcome bias. It makes it easier for me, the viewer, to stay tuned.
However, when it comes to print reporting, I have to be able to understand what you are writing and since I can’t see you, all I have is the writing and if that’s bad, I’m eventually going to stop reading a bunch of gobbledygook.
Can we also talk about Caroline Mutoko’s exceedingly fake British accent? Actually, let’s talk about all the radio presenters fake accents. Trying to listen to them straining to produce those fake accents for hours on end can be quite unbearable.
Sanjay isn’t my cup of tea but Zain.. yes, pity she got married before I got to her but never fear… she knows I am here for her on the rebound – if it happens but I hope it doesn’t…
Pochohanta & all
Lets not nit pick words in an article..lets understand the message! Yes when the mesage cannot be understood then the PAPER is in trouble….yes good writing is desirable but ITS NOT natural. Yes Good writing is rehearsed (it irks some people like me who like it raw so that i can see the soul of the writer)
Philiph Ochieng is smart(brainy) but sometimes plays with words from A to Z with very little message….Many so called good writers try to put rhymes and such and it gets boring…….
Personally i like predictive brave pieces (even if they do not come to pass)….KE is brave and so is CT…..(they are blogers) ..I get their MESSAGES and thats enough for me
STD & DN are busineses..They have to deliver money to shareholders….They have audiences….ITS THIS AUDIENCES they have to please…Lets look closely at this audiences
example pochohantas son PATO (was patrick) and his sister Konso (was Consolata) .They are teenagers living in Eastlands (ISTO) with the DAD POKO and many neigbours maish……OTI…..WORI..OI…NONI…NENO…MIRO…
When you hear them speak (english or swa)…You will only hear O…O…ISH…O 0. (Thorough bastadisation of languages)
ITS this sort of audience STD & DN have to address…Conso already is at KMC (Kenya School of journalism)…and will be seeking attachement at DN or STD…
What do you expect…..
My point
AUDIENCES GREATLY INFLUENCE THE PRESS MORE THAN THE JOURNALIST INFLUENCE THE PRESS…Thats mine
CT
I meant you create a blog like…..the KE format..
Easy to see new comments
Chronicled
Easy to reply to(without any sign ins) etc
I have checked http://www.coldtusker.blogspot.com/ ..but NOT opening on this Cyber …..Will check later
Keep it up
I don’t do radio anymore (for about 6 years now) but what I can tell is that radio hosts try to appeal more to the commoner or even one below that level. They therefore have to bring out this superior image of themselves. The common guy will feel wowed by a non-Kenyanised accent and this will sell more for the radio station.
Wewe Lord,
Before you go too far with you rant.. I just read it and I cannot agree with you entirely. Kwani you want to say that Nation is writing for people in Eastlands only. You must be really small minded to think like this.
Lord, the nation is publicly owned and just like any public owned company has to strive for the best in the market and serve the best possible standards to the people. If what you are saying were to be the case then it means the slogan.. ‘Media for Africa’ is useless…
Enlightening the people is the purpose of the media and not appeasing them. The media tells the people the truth and not what they want to hear.
Who do you think owns Nation ?
Please get you facts ready because you seem not too have facts.
Such rants like what Lord has gotten into are in exactly the same kind of language in discussion here. I tried reading the rant but got lost somewhere in the middle. Trying to read again would not help a thing.
If Lord were a newspaper, I think he/she would be in trouble already.
Pocho
I do not see whats hard with what i wrote…Its probably you went to school and you were told READ & WRITE this way……..
Good luck
Lord,
Every time you pick your pen, you become a teacher.
Of what use would teaching be if it only reinforced what we already knew (or assumed we knew?)
If, like you assert:
“AUDIENCES GREATLY INFLUENCE THE PRESS MORE THAN THE JOURNALIST INFLUENCE THE PRESS”
What does it matter to believe that the world is a globe and not flat?
Yes, we could go with the masses. But the “mass” is most likely wrong 99 per cent of the time.
For me, I buy the New York Times (actually subscribe online) because I treasure whatever “English” I learn from the paper every day (not everyday!).
Let the Kenyan Newspapers write in “Sheng” if they want to, but I am not reading them again any time soon.
They just suck!
See Lord, when you start writing a professional paper in Sheng, you start losing an audience. Why would you want to lose an audience just in order to gain another one? It makes more business sense to start another product line to address the new audience. Solution:- Establish a tabloid paper that will focus on the needs of this new audience. In this case as you put it, the Eastlands sheng crowd will then get a paper that is done in a language that they understand and the original paper will not run the risk of losing established audiences.What more, there could be non-Eastlands crowds that would want to read the tabloid paper. My point here is, the established professional papers should not resort to low qualities just to make an extra buck. Starting a new line would handle this pretty well.
KimX & Pochohantas
You still both misinterpret my sheng thesis…..
My thesis was
The audience influences the PRESS or any literature……..
The Kenyan audience is ill educated & Sheng people (statisticaly)..The same time they view sheng as an ilicit language.(they lead contradictory lives) …
So their PRESS wether you like it or NOT must inform them in a language,jokes,cartoons ,culture they understand…..HENCE what you call the MEIOCRITY of the Kenyan press……ITS a REFLECTION OF THE SITUATION on the ground….The press must connect with the people
The fact that some highly educated persons (you & others) SKIM through the papers or not read at all ~is NO deterent so long as the NET raedership or profitability of PRESS is intact
My thesis…..
Bring those papers in the west, guys (most) here will not understand their cartoons,jokes,language(English) etc….& Vice Versa
I TOO HAVE BEEN SCANNING THE PRESS for a very long time……Believe it and have reflectd and found out that its the average audience the press is after…
I like Kapkirwok of STD & Betty Caplan…….I enjoyed cartoons TRAMPS (if you remember in STD..Cedric & Percieval)..I hate MADDO as you would expect…..He morphed from MADD to MADDO …….:grin: can you now see?
I NEVER watch TV except news……(DSTV is my stuff)
My RADIO is permanently tuned to BBC…all night while in bed (My wife used to complain…..this days she never wants any other radio outside bbc)
KimX and Pochohontas
I think KE and yourselves should be concerned of READERSHIP IN general…ITS absolutely DEAD…(do not know if ever it was alive)……..HOW do you expect the PRESS to be any better when people do NOT READ
I do read on my part……I have read through all Harry porters
My other good authors are ….Ken Follet…..Michael Crichton (Was sad he died a couple of weeks ago)..Mitchener….
Right now am reading DON QUIXOTE (please read this)…Have been laughing ..enjoying….
Its a BIG WORLD inside those books……
Riaga Omolo
Kenya Entrepreneur,
Its interesting you mentioned Caroline Mutoko’s accent – Here is the thing…
First of all Caroline Mutoko seems to believe that she’s Kenya’s finest… The problem is she comes across as a bimbo during her shows…. She’s not smart at all. Dude I was really excited when I saw the Kenya police marching her to cells….
I remember cheering as I saw this…. This is not because I support the media bill… But because I wanted Mutoko’s ego tamed … She seems to believe the money she gets there at Kiss Fm can move the political class… Well tough luck…
What made matters worse is Kibaki signed the bill…. Its like the Kibaki spit on her…. Oh man that was a picture to Behold….
People like Macharia Gaitho and Gitau Warigi among others are tribal writers….. Their articles are divisive… whenever their is an tribe issue at stake the recoil back and support their own tribe… Rasnah Warah seems to be living in a world of her own… She’s comfortable their… I pity her rants against the Africans in the west… She obviously does not know why we are in the West… She thinks that we are not patriotic… when we critique her articles..
Mutahi Ngunyi is another clown… He has a phd but his articles are not reflective of this… I personally would like to know what universities this guy attended because honestly I think he paid to get his degrees..
Philip Ochieng is a sophist…. He frequently writes some really nice articles apart from the recent past…. If I was too chose the best articles by a black person from Kenya in the Kenyan newspapers … It has to be from the chap…
Lucy Oriang is another one… She a times has some really nice articles… but her articles seem to be more complaining than giving solutions… I a times feel she does not have a good grip of what she’s talking about…
Betty Caplan articles are really good… her grammar and presentation of ideas is very nice…. Other Kenyan journalist should learn from her.. Gerry Loughorn on the Sunday Nation ‘Letter from London’ is another very good writer..
This is my view, I know Kenyans can do better than this…. So please if you get a chance to write something in the Kenyan papers … please set the standards..
Well when you say people don’t read, I can’t agree more with you. There’s just a lot of ignorance in the country hence the end product is mediocre which would then make the serious writers to pull the plug on writing serious articles for people who won’t read. Instead they focus on the section that reads serious content which is why I stated, the newspaper companies should instead invest in alternative media for the class that really cars less about serious content. They should not soil the good content with crappy stuff.
Lord:
I meant you create a blog like…..the KE format..
Ans: I use blogger not wordpress. I will look into migrating over.
Easy to see new comments
Ans: Hmmm… I think u need to click on the ‘comments’ just like in wordpress. Please try it again.
Chronicled
Ans: On the left side, there is a list that should list the last 10 posts. Is that what you mean?
Easy to reply to(without any sign ins) etc
Ans: No sign in required. You can also pose as Anon or use any OpenID.
I have checked http://www.coldtusker.blogspot.com/ ..but NOT opening on this Cyber …..Will check later
Keep it up
Ans: Thanks. Please try again & let me know. All comments are appreciated.