Citing one of the biggest Kenyan media company, it has retrenched a big number of journalistic staff after the management decided on a reorganization of the group operations in order to much the new ways the media consumer consumes their content.
However it is contradicting as the group management or any other media house management always announces that, “they are committed to quality journalism”. Well, no rational human being would believe this argument. It’s all about the money, how much profit the media company makes. The truth is all media companies in Kenya have been over commercialized.
It is indeed true the audience consumption of media content have changed drastically, the majority of people no longer wait for the prime time to watch news. Thanks to technology one can access news content as they break instantly. With just a click on your phone, you can access so much compared to the content which has been ‘sieved’ and set in a certain way for an audience to think and talk about.
Venturing to the internet sounds like a pretty good thing to undertake as it seems a relatively simple thing to do compared to the traditional media. In the internet, you just need to find out and publish in your different platforms. Very easy, right? That’s the reason of shrinking media houses.
At the same time, technology has torn apart the media industry, in terms of the major stakeholders are the advertisers, they determine close to everything the audiences read or view since they are the revenue generator of the media companies. Advertisers are now finding it easier to advertise online rather than the mainstream media. And actually why pay for a display ad in a newspaper when you can have your material delivered directly to the social media platforms of people who you know are likely to be interested in buying your product?
All these factors lead the media companies to invest heavily in their online platforms and therefore cutting down the number of employees and thus retain a few who are all “rounded”.