Tension is high at the Twin Towers newsroom as the Nation Media Group on Friday announced expected retrenchment of an unknown number of journalists from Monday.
This was announced during a staff meeting on the third floor headed by Group Chief Executive Officer Stephen Gitagama as the media house restructures its business operations.
Our source at Nation Center says staff could be heard conversing in low tones and speculating as the long strenous weekend begins ahead of the bloodletting set for Monday.
The meeting of all media staff members held by the management on the third floor is said to have been tension-filled as journalists questioned their bosses on their looming fate.
The newspaper division is expected to take the biggest hit as NMG management announced that it was shifting it business focus to leverage digital media growth going into 2023.
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Sources within Twin Towers told Swala Nyeti that those affected by the restructuring plans are expected to collect their redundancy letters from Monday.
Among those adversely affected by the media ritual is the former Group’s Editor-in-Chief Mutuma Mathiu, who has been demoted to the position of Group Consulting Editor (CE).
In his new position, Mutuma will support the new Group Editorial Director (GED) Joe Ageyo in charting a new path for NMG amid falling physical newspaper sales and tough economic times.
Ageyo, who was poached from Royal Media Services (RMS), is expected to guide the newsroom's transformation and integration of editorial operations.
Taking up Mutuma’s position is the former Head of Broadcasting and Director for Transformation at NTV, Monica Ndungu.
Monica will be in charge of driving organisational transformation, broadcasting, product strategy and implementing the new strategies, according to an internal memo seen by Swala Nyeti.
NMG has retained Richard Tobiko as the Group Finance Director in the changes communicated by Gitagama.
However, NMG has renamed the position to Chief Finance Officer (CFO) whose responsibilities include driving finance, production, procurement, distribution, legal and security.
Gitagama has also announced a new vacant position of Chief Commercial Officer (COO), with the shortlisting for the position said to be ongoing.
The COO will be in charge of driving all commercial and customer-related activities across all NMG platforms.
The regional media house says it will improve the size and quality of digital skills of its staff to match the needs of the target audience while placing the consumers in the middle of its operations under the fresh changes.
This come when most media houses are facing revenue challenges due to the prevailing economic situation in Kenya and the fast-changing global media landscape forcing media houses to rethink their business models to adapt with the digital canibalisation of traditional media.
Weeks earlier Standard Group Limited announced it was laying off more than 200 staff members due to the tough economic times, coming after BBC's Nairobi office also annnounced redundancy of hundreds of its Kenyan staff.
