So, Eldoret is now Kenya’s fifth city after Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu and Nakuru. Big deal. The birth of a city deserves robust storytelling. Well, The Standard let down its readers on this – twice.
The paper took the first shot at telling Eldoret city’s story on August 3 with a suitably substantive heading: “What award of city charter will mean to Eldoret residents”.
But the story by Stephen Rutto fell flat on this promising heading.
You would grab that story expecting a list of qualitative changes that a city charter would bring to the citizens of Eldoret, right?
Instead, over 80 per cent of this story dwelt on trivial or irrelevant info.
The intro was flat. The town was “getting ready for city status”. That is how the story of Eldoret city, a historic achievement, started. Subsequent sentences got wasted at describing how the town was being spruced up. As in, town inafagiliwa. Big news. Very important stuff to plant at the top.
You had to wait till paragraph six to find the closest thing to the promised qualitative change.
“A number of changes are set to accompany the much-anticipated city status of President Ruto’s hometown,” the story said.
Okay. What changes? The town’s spatial plan will now accommodate skyscrapers. And, henceforth, the town’s planning will be vertical and horizontal, paragraphs seven and eight said, respectively, without explaining the latter.
Paragraph nine teased, with a quote from Eldoret municipality manager Tito Koiyet “imagining” that expectations would be many. That is stating the obvious.
The story quoted Koiyet: “We expect more investments, visibility and an increased number of middle class”.
And that was the end of “change”. Mere speculations. The story would run for 22 paragraphs, the rest with no meaningful, promised “change”.
The paper made a second attempt at telling the Eldoret city story on the actual charter day, August 15, 2024.
“Eldoret becomes Kenya’s fifth city” the heading announced gallantly. But the story by Esther Nyambura was hollow.
The intro said: “Statues of gourds, maize, and athletes were among the highlights on Thursday as Eldoret municipality was officially conferred with city status.”
Yup. A city of maize. And gourds.
Again, this story struggled to show content. Only the last two paragraphs showed some weight.
One, that Eldoret had met key requirements (for city status): “a population of at least 250,000 ( what was the actual population?), an integrated urban development plan, sufficient revenue generation capacity, and essential service provision.”
Two, that the new city is “strategically located as a regional hub for trade, education, health, sports, and agriculture”.
Both stories gave razor-thin material and zero fanfare for Kenya’s fifth city.
Frankly, how The Standard told Eldoret’s story made you wonder if the town deserved city status. But if, indeed, the town had little to show for this, then The Standard’s only fault would be not clearly stating so.
