It is generally considered a miracle if a business story makes a headline in Kenya. Such things as scandals, political mudslinging, accidents, catastrophes, love triangles and the likes are the usual suspects for the headlines. Granted, editors are only too human and want a catchy headline in order to increase the sales and distributorship of the paper. This would in turn attract high advertising rates for the Media Company and thus fat salaries for the editors. Thus, even though a weighty economic issue may bedevil a country, it is highly unlikely that it will ever make it to the headline for the simple fact that a majority of Kenyans are just not used to business or scientific headlines. However, in a place such as India, economic growth rate usually make headlines mostly because the population has identified the real information that needs to be consumed. Other international papers such as the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times rank highly among influential people the world over.
Is Business Media/Journalism in Kenya really lucrative?
One aspect that many business publications and bulletins may have ignored to capture is the connection between the common Kenyan and the business story. For instance, if you were in a typical Kenyan campus, you would easily remember how everyone started to leave the TV room immediately the business news began. The business news would consist of currency rates, share prices and other quantitative figure that few would relate to unless they were in the financial field. Just a simple connection between the business numbers and a person’s life will help attract the readership and viewership of business media. Has anyone ever noticed how a publication such as the economist gets to the heart of the story? Many people do not have very fond memories of their economic courses/credits in college. How is it then that they are able to purchase the economist if the title reminds them of the cold nights they had with lots of coffee as they tried to cram those graphs? For sure, anyone seen reading the magazine by a pal is thought to be smart.
The other aspect is that business journalism requires a much more advanced training as compared to the normal reporting of human interest stories. One is required to go through the numerous data, make sense of them and then inform the general populace of the importance of the importance of the data to them. This is perhaps the reason why some people have suggested that journalism should be a graduate course.
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