Folks who produce the news at The Standard could use some idioms, like “cut to the chase”.
But we figured they didn’t know this idiom, because of how they did a story on September 15.
The heading could not have announced a bigger public interest story in the country’s current news. It said: “Costly burden taxpayers will bear if Adani-JKIA deal flops”.
But they went and strangled the story with endlessly meandering words. Practically every paragraph was written like a devious Uber driver. Ever rode an Uber whose driver, wanting to milk the most shillings from your pockets and stretch your patience to the hilt, took the longest possible twists on the road to get you from point A to B?
The story started out by announcing that somebody is going to stick Kenyans with a “substantial” bill if the now infamous, public-private-partnership deal with the Indian conglomerate, Adani Group, to build new terminals and runways at JKIA, whose details are still mysterious, is disrupted.
What were the three biggest stories on Kenyans’ lips?
Gachagua, SHIF and Adani. Besides Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua’s endless troubles and the limping launch of the country’s new Social Health Insurance Fund, Adani stole all the air in the room.
So, when The Standard announced that threatening divorce with Adani could cost Kenyans dearly, who would guess that the paper wouldn’t give the reader a figure?
What would a divorce settlement cost Kenyans? They refused to address the important parts of the subject. They wasted time with things that are not important.
Paragraph 2 reiterated that, according to the Adani contract, interruptions by the courts, Parliament or protests, shall trigger damages.
The rest of the story – no kidding – the entire balance of the story written in 1,239 words and 38 paragraphs – continued to elaborate on the damages’ triggers.
Not once did the story give us the score: what exactly would disruptions cost Kenyans?
What’s the idiom for what The Standard did? It comes from America’s film industry in the 1920s. Back then, most films were silent. To forestall boredom in the audience, editors would spice things up with sporadic chase scenes.
In the audience, you’d be like, here comes the good part, a chase. Back in the editing suite, an instruction to “cut to the chase” meant to edit out the boring details and roll from the good part, the chase.
The Standard refused to cut to the chase.
