It’s been a short week.
The media world is exactly that: so brutally short that a day is seconds long; a week, even shorter, a year is a moment.
So let us start with a death and funeral announcement.
Ladies and gentlemen, blow the trumpet of death for one of the most important members of our mediascape: the editorial.
We regret to announce the death of the editorial section of our news: that good old heart and soul of every news desk; that window into every news desk’s conscience.
For the millennials among us: the late editorial was the voice of the people; the voice of the Fourth Estate on issues affecting its audience; the voice and soul of a media house.
Back then, if you wanted to know what a media house thought or felt (or did not think and did not feel) all you needed was read or listen to its editorial.
So powerful was Editorial, now lying dead before us, that it sometimes landed many an editor in jail: not for breaching the peace, but for their depth; for provoking public discourse (the hallmark of any free society) for inspiring intelligent conversations on what mattered in the country and the world.
Gentlemen and ladies, our dear friend Editorial, is dead!
But all the signs of this death were there for all to see.
If there was one sign that our media houses were getting weaker by the day, then it was in our Editorials.
And no: A powerful Editorial need not be written from some peak of the Himalayas disconnected from the remotest part of this country; or talking at us from some rostrum in the clouds.
A powerful Editorial is a distillation of a nation’s conscience; it is every news desk’s stand on issues that the country needs a voice of reason to decide on.
Back then, an Editorial was so powerful, it was top on the agenda of an editorial board meeting: What is in the heartbeat of the country today?
There were days when readers bought newspapers; when audiences listened to radios and watched TVs, just to read, listen, and watch out for a news house’s Editorial.
Not anymore.
At best, our Editorials are no longer strong statements about our stand on the latest, underline, latest, social, political and economic issues facing Wanjiku.
Instead, they are weak regurgitations of our equally weak coverage of the country’ heartbeat.
They are no longer generated by an editorial board after intense discussions and crafted by by-partisan sharp-witted journalists, but by some poor souls reading from a boring script of the day.
At best, they are semantic noise from folks who, afraid of taking a stand, chose to sit on the fence and try to attract attention from both sides of the fence by making as much noise as possible.
Which makes this burial sadder – because in burying our dear friend, Editorial, we must ask ourselves, besides profit and dazzling screens, what else do our media houses believe in?
Are we dealing with ‘chameleon media’ here, one that believes in whatever belief is in season, in the vogue?
So, goodbye, our dear friend, Editorial, rest in pages!
