Events

Daily Nation’s blogger meet-up session- #BelieveTheTruth

Believe the truth panel

Thursday March 10th saw a meeting between traditional media and its digital counterpart. The Bloggers Media Limited, hosted the Daily Nation for a meet the bloggers forum, where they sought to demystify the lies that exist in the society and give the Daily Nation suggestions on how to best cover some truths. Bloggers Media Limited is a digital agency that connects bloggers and influencers to brands.

The forum which was streamed live, generated a lot of conversations offline as well as online under the hashtag #BelieveTheTruth.

The MC for the day was Robert Kunga, a director at BML. The panelists were Ng’ang’a Mbugua and Benard Mwinzi from the Daily Nation’s Editorial team, and Christopher Ndungu from the Digital Daily Nation’s Marketing department.

Ng’ang’a Mbugua explained the nitty-gritties of newspaper publishing. How there are several editions of newspapers and the stars on the newspaper denotes the edition. He also explained how they verify numbers of casualties at an accident. They either count the bodies or ask the police for the official figures.

The question of the future of print media, with the advent of digital platforms came up. Mr. Mwinzi responded by saying that though the trend globally has been that some newspapers die due to competition from new media, the narrative is different in Kenya. There still remains an audience which has to read their news in print.

He said that advertisers are also keen on print more than digital platforms. However, the newspaper is cognizant to the changing market dynamics and is evolving. They are also evolving with their target audience. “Same content, different platforms”, added Mr. Mwinzi. Christopher Ndungu said that is why one can now read the digital Nation online.

The recent arrests of bloggers for publishing the truth, also came up. Mr. Mbugua said that journalists and bloggers are facing the same challenge. “If you publish anything that rubs people the wrong way, they might come after you”, he said.

This point prompted the question of journalists who have lost their job at Nation for telling the truth. Mr. Ng’ang’a responded that objectivity is not tied to human resource. “Any journalist can cover the truth objectively”, he said. He added that employers make their decisions to relieve employees of their duties all the time. “It is not unique to the Daily Nation”, he added.

Journalists face a lot of trauma when reporting stories, what measures do the Daily Nation put in place to ensure proper debriefing?  They are entitled to their leave days, which they take, even though they work even on Sundays and public holidays. There is a policy of pulling a reporter off a story when they become so attached to the subject. “Reporters are expected to be super humans of sorts”, said Mr. Mbugua.

The following are samples of the conversations that were on twitter under the hashtag #BelieveTheTruth.