The People Daily newspaper has been shut down. The newspaper, whose hard copies have been running for free for about ten years was shut down at the end of November 2024 by MediaMax Kenya Limited, the media house that is associated by the Kenyatta family.
Following the shut down, MediaMax will now be publishing an ePaper edition online in what has been widely interpreted as a bid by MediaMax to cut costs. A spot check by Bizna Kenya on Friday December 6, showed that MediaMax published a 40-page ePaper edition of the newspaper.
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“Journalism insiders have known for a long time that the generation of newspaper readers who loved the smell of ink in a freshly published newspaper that they held in their hands are fading out and we must serve younger generations on the platforms where they hang out,” Mayaka Gekara, the People Daily newspaper Managing Editor stated in the goodbye-to-print editorial.
Since July 2014, the daily had been relying on advertisements to run its operations after becoming a free newspaper.
The idea behind this was to capitalize on wide circulation to attract business from advertisers.
The closure of the hard copy daily comes at a time when traditional print media is experiencing rapid decreases in the number of hard copy newspaper sales and a shift in advertising preferences to digital media by advertisers.
