NTV’s “Press Review” on Monday faulted Business Daily for failing to use simple ordinary words to explain complex business stories.
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Jargon in ‘Business Daily’? Not so fast
I disagree Business Daily uses jargon to the extent that stories are not understandable (“The use of jargon scares ordinary consumers from ‘Business Daily’—Daily Nation, Nov. 10, 2023). The BD content is biased to finance and business.
The example cited is ordinary language for a person who has passed through high school.
Veteran journalist and former Nation managing editor Jaindi Kisero uses heavier words.
At this rate, we may end up asking pharmacists to change the way they write illegible prescriptions and names of medicines.
Talking of the “NMG Manual of Style and Usage”, did the late Philip Ochieng ever make reference to it? He did not have kind words for complainants of his works—the vocabulary and subject matters.
Away from that, why did the Nation find it necessary to have BD as a stand-alone stable as opposed to an insert in the Daily Nation?
— Harrison Kinyanjui
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I disagree Business Daily is incomprehensible and should be simplified. BD has an audience in mind. A magazine for doctors would have medical language. Same as one for diplomats. BD is no different.
If BD lost its business character, it would add no value to its readers from the business community.
By being business-oriented in language, it’s able to increase knowledge instead of being plain and devoid of insightful content.
— Wilfred Bett
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The main shortcoming of Business Daily is lack of comprehensive international business and technology news.
Ignore the misplaced complaints about jargon by the uninitiated; we need you to cover companies listed on the NASDAQ and world equity markets more comprehensively.
— Alexander Njiru Njeru, Embu
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News stories too long to be enjoyed
Of late, the Nation stories are too long. How does the editor expect a two-page news item to be read? Such length should be reserved for feature articles.
The current items are verbose, full of repetitions and too long for anyone’s attention. Remember, like a woman’s skirt, a story should be “long enough to cover the subject but, most importantly, short and interesting”.
— Steve Otieno
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UK GDP is 3 times the Netherlands’
In your article “The story of the media coverage of King Charles and two queens” (Daily Nation, Nov. 3, 2023), you said UK has a GDP that is 39 times that of the Netherlands. Actually, the Netherlands has a GDP of $1.013 trillion and the UK $3.131 trillion.
— Brian Maitai, Nairobi
Public Editor: I stand corrected. A decimal point and a zero were inadvertently left out after the digit ‘3’ in the figure ‘39’. UK has a GDP just over three times that of the Netherlands, according IMF data as of October 16, 2028.
