The Star Takes You All the Way In Past the Gatekeepers

The Star Takes You All the Way In Past the Gatekeepers

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”.

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.