Berly Ogolla on the gutter press, and on the Nairobi Star, a recently released glamor magazine in Nairobi.

In the end, what is delivered is a cross between a leaflet for a raffle (there is a plasma screen to be won), the National Enquirer and a 32-page edition of Rupert Murdoch's the Sun. The success of the paper will hinge on the ability of Quarco and his group to bring KISS's brash in your face and controversial style to newsprint, a moulding of the respectability that money allows it to pretend to have, with the talent for throwing mud that the gutter press has buffed to a glint.

Read more here.

Every time a Kenyan journalist spends a stint in police detention, the whole of Nairobi goes crazy.

Fellow newsmen and women rush to Ground Zero to show solidarity. Human rights organizations and other groups come out of the woodwork, for a chance to exhibit what they claim is their undaunted support and commitment to the cause of democracy. Politicians, some with questionable human rights records, abandon their activities and run to the police station for the photo opportunity. The more dramatic they act, the higher the likelihood of their pictures ending up on the front page. They scream at and scold police officers, who in most cases are only following orders. They kick the gates open in clear violation of the protocol they demand the government use in summoning the press. They try any and everything that would earn them notoriety in the press - anything.

Edwin Okong'o criticizes the Standard Newspapers, on what he cites as irresponsible journalism.

Kenyans, basking in the so genannte expansion of Press freedoms gained after the revolution of 2002 will hardly pay any attention to the increasing tightening of the screw on the Standard Group and its employees. Likely many of us already retain an animus against the East African Standard, the worn phrase being that it is a tabloid, given to an obsessive publication of untruths and hyperbole that is unbecoming for a newspaper of its influence or size. There will be a schadenfreude in many quarters as financial pressure is brought to bear on the Standard, especially among its competitors but the pain that is now the Standard's will soon be shared by all Kenya.

Amir Ibrahim, "We ignore the plight of the Standard at our peril; an unfettered Press is the very cornerstone of democratic government." Read more here.