Changes continue at Nation as Mutuma Mathiu stamps his authority

Nation has shaken up its newspaper leadership as new editorial director Mutuma Mathiu moves to firm his grip on editorial management at the media house.

Information filtering in indicates the new raft of changes are part of efforts by Mutuma to realign his team to the new boss’ policy which as per an editorial in the Nation newspaper can be summarised with words such as ‘integrity’, ‘truth’, ‘accuracy’, ‘fairness’ and being a ‘watchdog’ on behalf of the public.

The reorganisation includes both vertical as well as horizontal movements for top journalists, among them a former Media Council of Kenya Journalist of the Year award recipient.

The changes come days after it emerged that NMG had sanctioned the poaching of top talent from Standard Newspaper.

Part of the restructuring sees John Kamau named head of content.

The journalist lauded for penning informative and well researched articles, will also be in charge of newsroom affairs at the Nation newspaper.

A former Journalist of the Year, Kamau has been described by Mutuma as a person who “doesn’t get on your nerves, whatever is happening” and as a journalist “who loves documents and arcane details.”

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In other changes, Aggrey Mutambo who has been the Kisumu Bureau Chief, will now head the Diplomacy and International Affairs section. The move seems to fit like a glove for the journalist who studied foreign relations at UoN.

Lucas Barasa will leave the Mombasa base to take over as a Parliamentary Editor. His replacement at the Coast-based bureau will be taken up by Allan Olingo.

On the other hand, Production Editor Kariuki Waihenya moves to the Special Projects Desk. Bernard Mwinzi will fill in the vacuum left by Waihenya’s departure.

Julius Sigei, who is the Deputy Editor for the weekend pages, takes over as head of the Agriculture desk while Francis Wanyonyi makes the horizontal move from Daily Nation to Saturday Nation.

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