BUSINESS NEWS IN KENYA
A post for those who aren't interested in daily accounts of the NARC-Kenya and ODM soap operas.
Business Daily
Great concept, first daily business paper in the region, like the FT it has pink (or is it brown) paper. I have a soft spot for them(was once offered a position on the BD-Africa launch team, BUT was otherwise occupied and couldn’t take the gig)
I’m torn between the print and online version. The online concept-BDafrica.com is one of the best African business news sites. The daily paper is great but I tend to feel that they take one story and slice it into many slices in order to fill the daily content.
An example, is the shortage of Accountants story, they have carried it in various formats in several issues of the paper in the past two months.
No background interviews have been done on the story e.g. talking to Accounting firms and companies. Just sound bites from two, three people and ICPAK.

Business Daily also does lots of WSJ/Reuters wire stories that aren't relevant or you can get on Google news. Then the usual gripe about Nation Media Group newspapers- there are quite a number of spelling and grammatical mistakes in the paper.

The other gripe is that the FTSE London stocks list is never complete. Its always chopped off halfway. How can you look at FTSE stocks and NOT have SabMiller and Vodafone on the list?

Suggestions
They should try and do more business stories from Africa and Asia.Otherwise,you end up with a paper where 10% of the content is local and 90% can be pulled off Google.

Make it cheaper or increase the content. The FT has a heck of a lot of content ,I once had a subscription had to read part of the paper on weekends ,i couldn’t finish it in one morning(and work in the morning).
Take Bankeleles route- Add it as a Supplement in the Daily Nation and increase the price of the Daily Nation marginally.

Change editors
- i see the logic in sharing editorial control with the Daily Nation i.e. So that the stories DONT clash or conflict. Because some breaking news stories make sense to both papers. Someone has to decide which paper will carry what story.
But the Business Daily needs someone with business interest to pick the wire stories. So that they pick stories that can excite reader NOT just stories that can be picked off the net.

Daily Nation
Business news isn't as great as the EA Standard.

EA Standard
Balanced politics and business news, But NMG publications trump them in the quality of business news. The EA Standard has all the ingredients for better business journalism BUT they just cant seem to find the right recipe.
People who can only buy one paper (cant afford Business Daily)and need both business and politics buy this paper.

Kenya Times
The head of business news deserves a medal. In spite of having less resources than NMG and Standard, Kenya Times has good online content on its site. The articles also tend to be more incisive, with appropriate comments. If they got more resources, i think they can beat NMG at this game.

Business in Africa
The stories tend to have a South African slant, with a little bit from elsewhere. I find the articles academic with little value addition

The Times (UK)
Its one of the best papers around. I find it well balanced and an interesting read.You will find it engrossing even if you aren't white and believe you run the country(By country i mean the UK)

Time/Newsweek
Good weeklies but Newsweek has a more international outlook. TIME is more American focused(news with an American perspective).

Economist
Articles that get you thinking,good to read. By the way they have a special subscription offer-valid until June.

Al Jazeera
News from a non-US/UK perspective. Interesting interviews of people like Gen Musharraff, Sheikh Aweys

CNN/ BBC
Good for the programmes like Quest and the documentaries But with Google,RSS and other net news some of their news seems like internet feeds on your telly.

KTN
The better business news on television.

NTV
Business news is sufficient. The only problem is that the same stuff can be read in the next day's paper.

KBC
It has more extensive business news than NTV/KTN; the one of the problems is that we(Kenyan viewers) prefer to watch KTN,NTV and CITIZEN. The other is that they don’t display the market prices(NSE) properly.