Govt paper to counter other media

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Smarting from a media blackout that followed controversy over the Communications (Amendment) Act 2008, the Kenya government has finally launched a weekly national newspaper.

The first issue of Kenya Today, a baby of the Ministry of Information and Communication, hit the newsstands on August 24, with its now trademark long and winding page one commentary seeking not only to explain its editorial policy but also apparently justifying its presence in the market in the first place.

“We looked at The New Vision in Uganda, Korea Today in South Korea, India Today and People’s Daily in China before we decided to launch Kenya Today. We want to be in that league of newspapers. They are government newspaper models that have worked,” he said

Not known to be afraid of controversy, Ezekiel Mutua, the Director of Information and Public Communication, did not seem to give a hoot about the otherwise wellfounded fears that Kenya’s youngest publication could shoot itself in the foot by embracing the tag of government mouthpiece. “A lot of positive stuff happens in the government, but the mainstream media only goes for the negative. Now the government has a forum in Kenya Today,” he said in an interview with ET. And, of course, he does not make any pretence at concealing the government’s bitterness with the media blackout earlier this year in which top ministry officials – Minister Samuel Poghisio, PS Bitange Ndemo, Government Spokesman, Alfred Mutua, and himself – were the hardest hit.

“The government has also found itself in a tight spot such as in the case of the Communications Act where we were given a blackout. It was embarrassing for a whole government to be reduced to distributing leaflets. Now we have a forum,” he asserted. But analysts warn that should the management of the new publication fail to draw lessons from the experiences of Kenya Times, once an out and out government mouthpiece during the era of former President Daniel Moi, then it would go down quicker than the authorities had anticipated.

The former ruling party publication, The Kenya Times, is today struggling to stay afloat after it lost a huge chunk of its readers due to its one-sided political coverage, a situation that was made worse when advertisements from the government equally dried up. In the immediate past edition of ET, we carried the depressing story of Kenya Times, a newspaper that is today finding it hard to even sustain correspondents, let alone a competent team of journalists.

Yet Mutua, who insists Kenya Today will be a government forum, does not see just how the publication could fail to survive. “Kenya Today is here to stay. This is a newspaper that is going to cause ripples in the market I can assure you,” he says, moving quickly to indicate that the government, which he rightly says is the biggest advertiser ever, is going to prioritise placing advertisements in Kenya Today ahead of any other publication.

This is not going to be a unique concept to Kenya Today. It has been done before, he says. When the government established the Kenya School of Monetary Studies, a circular was issued to all government departments and agencies requiring them to first consider the venue for functions before moving on to commercial hotels. “This does not mean that government was to stop using hotels. It just meant that the Kenya School of Monetary Studies was to be given priority consideration before any hotel could be considered. In the same line, government departments and agencies will also be required to give priority to Kenya Today in advertising,” he said.

Despite its very quiet, even stealth, appearance on the newsstands as if its establishment was an afterthought, Mutua, who is the Editorial Director of the newspaper, says the publication was preceded by extensive research and review of the performance of other government publications around the world. And the fact that such a research was carried out in the first place, he says, should serve to warn skeptics that Kenya Today is not just a passing cloud.

“We looked at The New Vision in Uganda, Korea Today in South Korea, India Today and People’s Daily in China before we decided to launch Kenya Today. We want to be in that league of newspapers. They are government newspaper models that have worked,” he said of a newspaper that currently relies heavily on the Kenya News Agency for stories. A syndicated news service of the Ministry of Information and Communication, KNA has since the 1970s been churning out a lot of human interest stories that the mainstream media opted to give a wide berth since the mid-1990s. This was when media houses begun to strengthen their own regional bureaus following notions that KNA would not touch sensitive anti – government stories.
But, quite characteristically, Mutua says Kenya Today will focus on development stories and not the sensational stuff that have become the forte of the mainstream media, although, he argues, the publication will not go out of its way to defend the government. The primary intention, he says, is to serve the public with a rich menu of news and information. He, in fact, verges on the contradictory when he says that Kenya Today is not a government mouthpiece, an assertion that naturally prompted the question of whether the new kid on the block (in government terms) would find it easy to break a story in the ilk of Anglo Leasing if a similar scandal ever happened again.

“If such a scandal ever happened we would publish. But what we are not going to do is to play to the man – bite – dog principle of news, which implies that only the odd and the negative is worth being published. To us we shall publish both the side of dog – bite - man story as well as that of man – bite – dog. It is a story to us either way,” said Mutua in an exclusive interview with ET. And, despite that, he insists that there is no intention of recreating the concept of journalism. “We are just trying to be balanced and fair. It is the other publications that are trying to redefine journalism.”
The newspaper, which appeared on the streets so quietly some might not even know it exists several months down the line, was apparently received very well by the market, according to Mutua. For a publication whose print run is 10,000 copies per week, selling 8,000 copies in the first issue, according to Mutua, is a milestone that deserves a part on the back.

But that is before the nitty-gritty of the supposed impressive performance of the first issue of Kenya Today in the market are unveiled. Each government ministry, says Mutua, has subscribed up to 100 copies every week, which means that nearly all the 8,0000 copies of the first issue that were sold might actually have been distributed to government departments. And in future, every government agency and parastatal might be required to subscribe. When this scenario is fully taken into account, then the bits and pieces of Mutua’s confidence that Kenya Today is not only here to stay but will also be a force to reckon with begin to fall in place. When asked about when they hope to break even in this otherwise very competitive market, Mutua was more than just confident: he livened up. With the government redirecting all its advertisement to Kenya Today, he said, “we can even break even tomorrow”.

But the arrangement that has seen Kenya Today hit the newsstands is rather unique, even unfathomable, and it is made even more difficult to understand by Mutua’s reluctance to delve into questions touching on finances. He gives the question a long explanation. Every government department, he says, is today required to raise money through the newly embraced concept of Public Private Partnership in which government departments enter into a partnership with private firms to deliver a service. The publication of Kenya Today, he says, has been made possible through such an arrangement, allowing the government to put out a national newspaper without coughing up a cent.

The Department of Information and Public Communication, according to Mutua, signed an agreement with Chronicle Media Limited, a Nairobi-based firm, to run Kenya Today. Chronicle Media, he says, funds the newspaper 100 percent, with the government only being required to provide stories through KNA. That would mean that Kenya Today is jointly owned by Chronicle Media and the Department of Information and Publication Communication, but Mutua refuses to discuss either the shareholding percentages or how the two firms would share returns. “Those are details that we shall talk about when the right time comes,” he says.

In its editorial structure, however, there is no mention of Chronicle Media, as Mutua is the Editorial Director while Sosio Simiyu and Chris Musyoka, both of who are employees of the ministry, are the Managing Editor and Associate Editor respectively. He also disclosed during the interview that the department is fully handling distribution and circulation, with plans already at an advanced stage to farm out this contract to a private firm. Printed by the state of the art machines of Radio Africa, which publishes The Star, Kenya’s latest daily newspaper, Kenya Today is, however, still head – hunting for a substantive Managing Editor. “We expect to have recruited a managing Editor by the time we launch in three months time. By the time we launch we shall also have increased the pagination from the current 32 to 60,” said Mutua.