When reporting something dramatic, there is a temptation to cram all the interesting bits into the intro. Writer wants to tell everything at once. Bad idea. You end up with a sentence running into kilometres, like this one:
A crowded bridge bursting at the seams with pedestrians; bare bus parks within Nairobi’s central business district; heavy police presence…these were the scenes that characterised Nairobi as the directive that matatus should not access the city centre took effect yesterday, forcing thousands of passengers to brave the long trudge into the city (Daily Nation, December 4, p2).
Shorter sentences capture drama better. They should have been used here instead of the semi-colons.
US official lauds Kenya for war on anti-narcotics (People Daily, December 6, p. 9). What is “war on anti-narcotics”? It is either war on narcotics or anti-narcotics war.
The lobby wants former Rift Valley and Eastern provinces divided into each (Star, December 6, p.6) Each what?
Suspended NHIF managing director Geoffrey Mwangi and the finance director Francis Kurgat were last week arraigned before court where he was charged with subverting justice by blocking investigators from accessing documents from the fund (People Daily, December 6, p.2) Two things: one, arraigned is enough, “before court” is unnecessary. And two, who was the “he” charged with subverting justice etcetera? Two persons were arraigned. Clearly, we are not learning!
Meru National Polytechnic principal Geoffrey Rukunja said the TVET sector needed a paradigm shift owing to the support it was currently receiving from the government and other partners especially in equipping the institutions (MyGov., December 4, p.2) What is the meaning of this sentence? What is “paradigm shift”? The jargon doesn’t make any sense here, nor was it explained subsequently.
Puzzling Headline of the Year: CEO’s passion toment or young entrepreneurs (MyGov, December 4, p.23). What was meant here?!
Internal documents, however, show that that was the beginning of what appears to have been a scheme to siphon off more than Sh1 billion from the health insurer, as the system that was advertised for was not delivered despite seven bidders being led to the end of a dud procurement process by the NHIF management (Daily Nation, December 7, p.2) Those are 55 words. You can’t breath or recall what was said earlier in the sentence. Nor would the figures in the sentence (Sh1 billion, seven bidders) make sense. Such writing fails to communicate.
The Kalenjin council of elders has warned that the community risks losing the 2022 presidential race due to the battle of egos pitting Deputy President William Ruto and Baringo Senator Gideon Moi (Daily Nation, December 7, p.5) This sort of journalism is unacceptable. Here the Nation frames the presidential contest as a race between “tribes” (this word is colonial, avoid it). Journalists ought to outgrow such thinking. Doesn’t matter whether that is actually what the elders said.
