Nation To Initiate Fresh Mass Firing In Newsroom Changes

The Nation Media Group (NMG), which recently rose to prominence over its spirited battle against Trade Cabinet Secretary (CS) Moses Kuria, will declare redundancies again, seven months since a similar exercise saw veteran journalists at the regional media house lose their jobs.

A source at the Kimathi Street-based media house revealed to Viral Tea of NMG's intention to trim down the number of its workforce following a staff meeting held at Nation Centre in the Nairobi Central Business District (CBD) on Tuesday, June 27.

The meeting was also attended virtually across the bureaus whereby NMG's top management is targeting the laying off of a number of reporters and editors in newsroom changes to a truly converged operation.

Inside a newsroom at Nation Media Group. /NMG

NMG Editorial Director, Joe Ageyo, who addressed the meeting, had revealed that the media house shifted to a centralised newsdesk for all stories across newspapers, TV and Radio as part of a new business strategy towards a converged and centralised newsroom. This will see the media house only publish and air stories that have passed the quality threshold.

Converged Newsroom

According to a screenshot of the meeting seen by Viral Tea, some of the roles that will be made redundant in the new structure include revise editors, reporters, online video producers and magazine editors, a move that could leave a number of journalists holding those roles redundant.

All of NMG's newspapers: Daily Nation, Saturday Nation, Sunday Nation, Business Daily, The East African and Taifa Leo are run by a team of revise editors, whose jobs will be affected by the mass layoff. The newspaper also runs different niche magazines daily, which have a full team of editors, sub-editors and reporters.

In turn, new positions arose from the new style of operations with the media house set to be recruiting for six posts; that is chief production editor (video and audio), lead coder, native content editor, audience analyst, social media analyst, and data visualizer.

“These roles will be advertised internally and you are encouraged to apply if you are affected in consultation with your editor," the screenshot seen by Viral Tea read in part.

The centralised newsdesk will even see regional editors be required to pitch content to that desk dubbed the News Hub and all stories will be commissioned from that hub, headed by Allan Odhiambo for the newspapers, and Ben Kitili of NTV for broadcast.

It is likely to tighten financial affairs surrounding correspondents who earn per article/story as less of their content is likely to be published or aired. Additionally, retainers are rumoured to be affected, meaning possible salary cuts.

The layoff was also necessitated by the reduction in Nation newspaper pagination by four pages, meaning less staff in exchange for the hope of better quality.

Mass Firing Effects

The source also disclosed that NMG's Human Resources (HR) manager, Jane Muiruri addressed the meeting alongside Ageyo, which was a shift from the norm when its Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Stephen Gitagama, would deliver the chilling news to the staffers. The meeting invitation was sent to all editorial staff on Saturday, June 24.

To prepare for devastating consequences as a result of the firing, the NMG Human Resources department moved to provide counselling services to distressed staff, with the HR manager said to have pushed for staff to be recommended counselling for effective management of the developments.

After a meeting with editors, which came as a postmortem of the main staff meeting, HR sent out an email on the “Employee Assistance Program” which refers employees for professional counselling at no cost through a toll-free line.

The media house also retained Build and Restore Counselling Services, a counselling organisation, through which employees can “manage stress and access post-traumatic counselling services.”

Reports indicate that Chief Operations Officer (COO), Monica Ndung’u, has been tasked with ousting employees not contributing optimal value to the company, in a narrative that changed from a digital-first quest to convergence.

Last NMG Mass Firing

NMG's last mass layoff came on Wednesday, November 30, 2022, with Gitagama stating at the time that the mass redundancies had to be made in a bid to align itself with the current market environment.

"At the beginning of this month, we announced changes to accelerate our business transformation agenda to assure our success in the long term and the sustainability of our journalism. I want to take this opportunity to sincerely thank each one of you for the role you continue to play in our transformation journey with diligence, commitment and passion," the CEO stated.

"Regrettably, this refocus will result in a reorganisation of our workforce. This is an extremely difficult decision in view of the prevailing business environment. This exercise will be carried out with utmost dignity and in accordance with the Labour Laws of Kenya. We will strive to provide all the necessary support to help those affected to manage the transition."

Gitagama expressed that the changes would have diverse effects on its staff but expressed confidence that NMG was moving in the right direction.

The regional media house joined a terrifying Kenyan media atmosphere in the last quarter of 2022 that saw a host of media houses countrywide shed off staff en masse.

However, rather than fire the usual reporters and journalists, it went for the veteran members of the Fourth Estate as well as editors.