[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hat Kenya has one of the highest turnover rates of journalists working in newsrooms is not new. If journalists were soccer players, this would be referred to as a transfer window. But this is as far as it goes with the similarities between the two professions.
You see, unlike in the football clubs where there is a period within which a club can bring new talent, the transfer window in our local media has no rules. This means that a journalist can work in as many media houses as they wish, so long as the pay is better than what is being offered by the current employer.
There could be a few exceptions. If the journalists are not moving from one media house to another, then they are exiting to join the corporate world, expectedly as communication managers. The corporate world usually taps into media house talent as a way of ensuring they have easy access to acreage of space and airtime in the outlets where they have poached from.
While such movements are seen as, indeed are, good for the individual practitioners as they portend career progression and advancement of personal goals, they leave a lot to be desired on the state of the industry. Yet it is not a secret why journalist move from one media house to another.
For starters, it is rather obvious that the biggest motivation for such movements is pay, thanks to disparities in the payroll. In some cases, journalists are forced to look for job opportunities elsewhere following retrenchment fashioned as restructuring in an industry where job scales are largely at the discretion of individual editors/media houses. It is therefore no surprise that most journalists use these regular movements to strengthen their “bargaining power”.
The Kenya Union of Journalists negotiates terms of service for its members and in some cases it has been successful in securing progressive Collective Bargaining Agreements. Unfortunately, not all media houses allow their staff to be members of KUJ and sometimes journalists are forced to make a choice between being KUJ members and retaining their jobs.
Whether self-imposed or voluntarily, nomadism within the local media industry continues to be the order of the day, and the bane of stability within media houses. Industry players, judging by lack of measures to retain quality staff are either oblivious or simply turning a blind eye to its impact on the sector.
For instance, the effect of massive exits of senior editors in several leading outlets in recent months has left the media houses struggling to find their footing as evidenced in embarrassing editorial blunders captured is several editions of the Observer. This is more so because when senior editors move, they do so with their editorial teams in tow.
The ripple effect is not only that it leaves a huge gap in their immediate former newsrooms but also creates a situation where journalists in the new offices are declared redundant.
At a personal level, a journalist needs to reflect on the impact frequent change of employers is likely to have on their career profiles as potential employers may interpret this as disloyalty.
READ: WHAT UHURU’S KISUMU VISIT MEANS FOR NYANZA, RUTO STATE HOUSE BID
This is a call for introspection for the media industry. What internal adjustments (if any) can be adopted by media houses to ensure stability in staff retention? Is it time to benchmark abroad? For instance, what keeps Christian Amanpour, Wolf Isaac Blizter and Becky Anderson at the global network CNN for decades?
Story credit: mediaobserver.co.ke
