The never-ending political campaigns and populism competition among politicians, as well as the catchy front pages focusing on governance issues, which are widely circulated via digital platforms, have given newspapers a new lease of life.
While the figures for overall news consumption rank newspapers a distant fourth—after TV, radio and social media—through innovative approaches such as long reads and punchy headlines, print media is resurging, with circulation figures increasing steadily.
However, away from the challenges of dwindling revenues from advertising, shrinking markets and competition, especially from digital platforms, print media continues to face other hurdles—high taxes on newsprint, ballooning operational costs and defamation suits.
An interim study of circulation figures by the Media Council of Kenya shows that prevailing political conditions and headlines determine whether a newspaper is sold in a region or not.
Other factors affecting sales are timeliness of newspaper delivery, entertainment, accessibility, sports news, and most important, promotions through newspaper review segments on TV and radio.
The study shows that weekend newspapers record the highest circulation figures, with mornings being the peak selling hours.
The Nation and Standard dominate the circulation figures, with publications with specialised content or inserts on business, sports, agriculture and regional economic blocks pulling the biggest readership, indicating interest from readers on deep, well done long reads, with a public interest touch.
The Kenyan media landscape has undergone significant changes since the enacting of legislation that operationalised articles 33, 34 and 35 of the Constitution aimed at protecting media freedom and freedom of expression.
This has seen an exponential growth in the sector, which currently has seen the country register 100 print publications, 135 TV stations and over 300 radio stations.
However, the growth in the sector, has not seen matching development in terms of job creation, quality of content, diversity and plurality in voices, nor viability and sustainability.
Media players in Kenya need to enhance and systematise knowledge on media sustainability by stimulating, identifying and aggregating knowledge and best-case studies that will generate a variety of practice-oriented information tools that they can then use.
Funding and business management have been among the biggest challenges to the sustainability of pluralistic media in the Africa region.
Support for media outlets has come predominantly from private entrepreneurs and, in some cases, politicians or their families. Mainstream financial institutions, such as banks, have unfortunately kept off.
Mr Bwire is the Director, Media Training and Development at the Media Council of Kenya.
