I can scarcely believe it has been 18 years since we were pacing the metaphorical delivery room floor, nervously awaiting the birth of the then Nairobi Star. She arrived, full of colour, noise and attitude, on July 1, 2007, courtesy of the ever-adventurous Radio Africa Group under the visionary Patrick Quarcoo, or PQ, as we called him.
They were already well known for giving Kenyan youth their soundtrack through Kiss FM and Classic 105. Now, they wanted to add a newspaper to the mix, an audacious tabloid that could shout just as loudly as their DJs.
From day one, the Nairobi Star was not here to be polite. It landed with all the subtlety of a matatu horn, bringing with it a 32-page, full-colour tabloid packed to the rafters with sensational human interest stories, flashy headlines, showbiz gossip, fashion, sports and just the right dash of scandal.
Its tagline was ‘Real-life stories every day,’ which sounded a bit like a soap opera, but that was rather the point.
The inaugural front page made jaws drop around the capital, featuring a confession from an assistant minister about arranging abortions for Catholic nuns. As you can imagine, this caused more than a few choking incidents over breakfast.
The Star was brash, cheeky and completely unbothered by the conventions of its older, more stately siblings, the Daily Nation and the Standard, who until then had reigned supreme with their careful headlines and restrained prose.
I had the distinct honour, and mild panic, of being recruited as news editor during the early build-up to launch. By May 2007, I was in the trenches alongside a formidable founding editorial team: editor Catherine Gicheru, features editor Judy Munyinyi, sports guru Sulubu Tuva, production editor Joseph Olweny and a host of other brave souls ready to risk professional reputation and sanity in equal measure.
For two months, we worked on dry-runs, 32-page A3 test editions that no one outside the newsroom would ever see. The pressure was immense. Not only were we creating something entirely new, but we also had to meet a rigid 5pm layout cut-off imposed by the Nation Media Group’s printers.
Miss that, and your paper would be bumped to the back of the queue. So yes, punctuality was non-negotiable, caffeine was compulsory and sleep became a rumour.
Oddly enough, one of our very first major stories was about a series of literal tremors, earthquakes, no less, emanating from Tanzania but rattling Nairobi. In hindsight, it was fitting. Because the arrival of the Nairobi Star was itself a seismic event in Kenya’s media landscape.
Much like an earth tremor shakes the ground beneath well-established buildings, the Star sent ripples through the carefully ordered world of Kenyan journalism. With its punchy headlines and unashamedly urban flavour, it gave voice to the people and issues often glossed over by the mainstream press. It was raw, intimate and occasionally outrageous.
Where the traditional dailies preferred polished and predictable, the Star dived into the messy, emotional realities of life, sex, crime, politics, betrayal, celebrity meltdowns, family drama and the occasional goat theft. Our lean budget and scrappy team did not stop us from having a disproportionately loud impact.
The Star had also opened up a new fault line for talent. We brought in a new wave of journalists who were hungry, bold and perhaps just a bit mad. I remain proud to have stood among them, sleeves rolled up and headline font at the ready.
By 2009, the paper had grown into its national identity, dropping ‘Nairobi’ from its name and leaning more into politics, while retaining its tabloid soul. Today, the Star is a fixture in Kenya’s media constellation, and its legacy, love it or loathe it, is undeniable.
The birth of the Nairobi Star was not just another newspaper launch. It was a proper media tremor, one that cracked old assumptions, shifted the ground under newsrooms and made a whole new generation of readers sit up and pay attention.
Believe me, you can still feel the aftershocks.
