The Star Takes You All the Way In Past the
Gatekeepers
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| Caps locked headline before The Star re-branded |
By MUSYOKA NGUI
The Star
newspaper has rebranded to be a political paper. In a catchy commercial running
in the Radio Africa Group radios, the paper “goes past the corridors of power,
past the whispers, the interns, the security guards and ‘takes you all the way
in’ “. Interesting.
The rebranding has
eliminated the block capital letters that wrote the headlines. They looked ugly
and kind of in your face. They smacked of an utado attitude and more often than
not touched what Daily Nation and The Standard dared not. Of course it
came with credibility issues. Anyway they had the benefit of doubt as the new
kid on the block and “fastest growing newspaper”.
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| New The Star logo |
The graphics are
superb. There is more color, spaced print and big pictures. I like the Victor’s
editorial cartoons and Gathara’s. What I
don’t agree with is that pictures can substitute content. You can have tabloid
pictures but minus in- depth features the paper can just be another photo
album. You don’t want that.
Kenyan editors have for
a long time set politics as the day’s agenda. It is served as breakfast, lunch and
dinner. Much like the staple ugali. And Kenyans like politics. It lets them
exercise their opinion rights for so long a time that they forget the real
issues. Too much politics breeds noise and repetition bordering on redundancy.