What if the headlines went quiet for a week?
No political brawls. No scandalous exposés. No fiery declarations from roadside rallies. Just silence. For Kenya’s legacy media, this isn’t just an unlikely scenario, it’s a looming crisis. Strip away the daily drama churned out by politicians, and many newsrooms would find themselves with dangerously little else to say. No wonder every small political exchange is “milked” extensively.
This is not simply about editorial choices. It is about a deeper structural dependency that has taken root over time, one where political controversy has become the crutch sustaining media business models. In an age where attention is currency, and virality drives valuation, mainstream outlets have increasingly outsourced their relevance to the noise of the political class.
I’ve observed this first-hand. During one of Kenya’s protest seasons, a leading TV station dedicated its entire broadcast day to the unfolding street drama. From dawn to prime time, not a single story outside the protests was aired. No business update, no education feature, no glimpse into everyday lives. Just endless loops of tension and talking heads. I found myself asking: Was it fear? Fear that social media would outpace them? That TikTok, Twitter (X), and Facebook would steal the narrative? Or was it a desperate attempt to stay clickable in a marketplace where outrage is the new oxygen?
This moment revealed something critical: the clickbait culture, once an online nuisance, has infiltrated legacy newsrooms. Research, reflection, and nuance have become luxuries. The focus is now on immediacy, emotional triggers, and political spectacle, often at the expense of clarity, balance, and relevance.
Yet this reliance on political noise is profoundly unsustainable. It is cyclical, performative, and predictably shallow. Worse still, it conditions the public to associate newsworthiness solely with conflict. The result is a disfigured national psyche: a public constantly on edge, cynical about institutions, and blind to progress unless it’s packaged as scandal.
The crisis facing Kenya’s mainstream media is not technological, it is existential. What is the role of a national broadcaster or newspaper in the 21st century, when everyone with a smartphone can “break” news? What makes legacy media distinct, credible, or even necessary?
To answer this, we must return to first principles: journalism’s role is not just to inform, but to make sense. To offer context, perspective, and coherence in a fragmented world. But sense-making cannot happen in a newsroom locked in a toxic loop of politics and panic.
Globally, some outlets are beginning to recalibrate. The New York Times, for instance, has invested in specialist desks, climate, gender, science, and education, producing deeply researched journalism that helps readers navigate complexity. South Africa’s Daily Maverick blends investigative reporting with a reader-funded model that prioritises public interest over popularity. And in Rwanda, The New Times has repositioned itself around development journalism and solution-driven stories that reflect the country’s reformist momentum.
These international shifts offer inspiration, but Kenyan media must chart its own path. Our newsrooms must build strong editorial desks around emerging areas like climate resilience, public health, civic innovation, informal sector transformation, and creative industries. Kenya is not short of compelling stories. Consider the community libraries thriving in Kibera, the solar-powered irrigation systems changing lives in Turkana, or the women-led cooperatives redesigning leather products for export in Kajiado. These are not soft stories, they are nation-building narratives.
Instead of mimicking social media’s speed, legacy outlets should lean into depth. Data journalism, field reporting, explainer content, and policy analysis are areas where professional media can still lead. But that will require capacity-building, institutional patience, and editorial courage.
At the heart of this reinvention must be an honest reckoning with the audience. Who are we truly serving? Too many media houses pursue a vague “public interest” while losing touch with Kenya’s most dynamic demographics, urban youth, digital natives, rural entrepreneurs, and the diaspora. Designing formats around their consumption patterns, whether newsletters, visual explainers, WhatsApp audio stories, or mobile-optimised features, is not optional; it’s survival.
In a landscape flooded with misinformation, trust is legacy media’s last durable currency. It must be earned, through editorial transparency, verified facts, and a bold rejection of sensationalism. That also means abandoning the obsession with clicks and cultivating loyalty instead.
This will not be possible without structural rethinking. We need a new generation of newsroom leadership, empowered to experiment with formats and funding. Journalism schools must update their curricula to align with current media demands. Civil society, grantmakers, and tech platforms should support public interest journalism, not as charity, but as infrastructure. Media viability must become a cross-sector conversation.
We are approaching a reckoning. The political class will not always perform. There will be moments, perhaps even seasons, when they go silent, either by design or fatigue. What will the media do then? What stories will we tell when there is no scandal to chase?
In truth, that moment of silence could be a blessing. It would force the media to look inward, to rediscover the ordinary stories that make a nation extraordinary. The ones that outlast headlines. The ones that build legacy, not just traffic.
Because when the politicians go silent, only the truly relevant storytellers will still have something worth saying.
Edward Mwasi is a Media Industry Strategy and Innovation Consultant at CBiT. Email: edwardmwasi@yahoo.com
