Transition looms as Joe Odindo leaves Standard Group

Standard Group Editorial Director Joseph Odindo has formally left the media house a few weeks to the expiry of his three-year contract.

Business Today has authoritatively learnt that Odindo has already cleared with the Mombasa Road-based company with his clearance letter indicating his contract has expired.

Already the media house has started the process of recruiting a new Editorial Director and has shortlisted former Nation Media Group Executive Editor, Weekend Editions Eric Obino, Standard Deputy Editorial Director and Group Managing Editor, Daily Editions Kipkoech Tanui and NMG Online and New Content Editor Churchill Otieno for the position.

Obino, a calm but firm journalist who maintains a clean-shaven head, is said to be the front runner in the race though newsroom and shareholder politics could favour Tanui.

Odindo joined the Standard Group in August 2015 about two years after leaving Nation Media Group, where he served for about 30 years rising through the ranks from a trainee sub-editor to Group Editorial Director.

JO or Joe, as he is popularly known in the media world, is a former chairman of the Media Council of Kenya and sits on the board of The World Editor’s Forum, an affiliate of the World association of News Publishers.  A newsroom veteran, he worked with The Standard as a young sub-editor in the 1980s.

In addition,  he was the founding editor in 1994 of The East African, NMG’s regional weekly and served as chief sub-editor and later managing editor of the Daily Nation from 1999 to 2004.

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Odindo holds an undergraduate degree from Kenyatta University and a Masters degree from University of Wales.  He has also completed professional education programmes at the Harvard Business School and Cambridge University.