Dennis Kioko

Even on the internet, newspapers should encourage buying at a price over free reading The digital world is a very different one for newspapers, and this explains why many have shut down. The ones that survived took some time in the wilderness before figuring it out. Yet the ones that are transitioning seem doomed to repeat the mistakes of those who have been ahead of them. The first problem with digital news publishing is competition. Print newspapers are near monopolies. Setting up a newsprint plant and investing in distribution vans is very costly. You therefore end up with a handful of papers or even just one for a certain geographical zone.

Exactly which tube is larger? Which one is cheaper? Exactly how much does a tube of toothpaste cost? Looks like an easy answer, right? I mean, it’s exactly the amount you pay for the tube. That’s until you walk into a supermarket and realise that something weird is happening. Other than the very small tubes, most of the other tubes look the same size. Or rather the boxes look the same size. But then why do they cost vastly different prices - why do some tubes cost twice or almost thrice the price of others if they are the same?

To the average Kenyan, the supposedly poor person is simply a thief in waiting  In Kenya, when the government first announced measures against Coronavirus - many people on social media pointed out that they would especially affect the poor. More specifically, it has been said that if the poor didn’t get help soon, they would turn to crime. This should be good, right? It shows that we care about the poor? Yet, it raises some dark questions. Was the concern here really about the poor? Why is it that we only remember the poor when bad things are happening? I know a number of people who are going through rough patches due to the measures to combat Coronavirus. There is reduced spending by many businesses and equally by many individuals, and this is directly having an effect on numerous individuals and businesses whose income has effectively dried off. It does not help that the government barely has a welfare fund - when times were good, we spent away all the money. Normally...