By Ghost Writer
There are reasons journalists rank the first paragraph of a story as the king, queen, or boss. Known as the intro, it acts as the main allegation that provides angling, providing the hook that retains consumers’ attention and interest in the story. In keeping with a lawyering dictum that ‘s/he who alleges must prove’, the intro must be supported by an equally solid second paragraph, the nut graf. The rest of the body is filled with relevant facts and figures; some from the story subject’s fresh, solid, and memorable quotes, others from findings of a reporter’s research.
The average consumer of news is in a state of over-choice, buffeted by an avalanche of sources in print, audiovisual and online forms. What, then, is the clincher? What makes a story click?
Among other qualities, the ‘nose’ of the story must sound fresh and exciting. It must also seek to answer the germane questions in the mind of the consumer: So, what? Why should I care, anyway? How am I directly affected?
Members of Rwanda’s Senate converged on Monday, January 19, 2026 to be briefed by the Minister for Agriculture and Animal Resources, Telesphore Ndabamenye, on the government’s livestock development strategy. He was to explain to the country’s Upper House why farmers were not getting adequate animal feed at affordable prices, and what improvement measures were being undertaken. The session preceded the senators’ nationwide visits, from January 20-28, to engage with citizens and assess initiatives supporting livestock development, focusing on ensuring the availability and affordability of high-quality animal feeds.
Although there is no suggestion for uniform angling in the story as covered by different media houses, it is a settled argument that, at bare minimum, a keen journalist should have answered the following questions, in no priority order: (a) Why are Rwandan livestock farmers not getting adequate feeds at affordable prices? (b) What measures is the government taking to correct the anomaly? Ideally, Dr Ndabamenye was expected to explain the government’s past record and indicate its implementable plans. What was more? Every reporter who covered the event was to conduct a quick research on animal feeds, complete with fact-checking the minister’s pledges.
A sample of the Rwandan media revealed that most stories angled the story correctly, researched and provided additional information for value addition and consumer satisfaction. However, KT Press failed both the story angling and the research tests. Its story on the event exhibited a demonstrable numbness in ‘nosing’ and abject poverty of contextual legwork.
Titled, ‘New laws to regulate the quality of animal feed underway’, reporter Daniel Sabiiti’s story angled with minister Ndabamenye’s assurance of the government’s “plans to introduce new laws specifically targeting the quality of animal feed as part of a broader livestock law currently being drafted.” However, the rest of the story did not mention some parts of the proposed legislation, and how it would improve access of farmers to quality and affordable feeds. Sadly, it showed no research into the state of animal feeds manufacturing and their pricing in the country.
This off-side angling by KT Press only rivaled that of Vision Media, whose story went to town, thus; “Rwanda plans to introduce a law regulating livestock farming as part of broader efforts to increase agricultural production and improve standards across the sector.” After failing to deliver on the details of the proposed law, including its requirements and sanctions, the story drooled to the end without addressing availability, affordability and quality of animal feeds.
A sample of congruent and detailed stories on minister Ndabamenye’s presentation in the Senate would suffice. For example, Rwanda Dispatch headlined the story, ‘Government wants to expand local animal feeds production’, with an intro that quoted Dr Ndabamenye as saying that “the government plans to expand domestic production of animal feeds to reduce costs and cut reliance on imports as it seeks to accelerate growth in the livestock sector.” The story also had Ministry of Agriculture statistics on production capacities of animal feeds processing factories and a raft of measures the government was taking to improve production of inputs. Other publications which paid justice to the event through detailed coverage included New Times, Igihe, Top Africa News and Pure Africa News.
Lesson learnt? Story angling must be relevant to the purpose of an event, supported by memorable quotes and contextual returns from thematically-relevant research.
