Kenyan Blogging Community and the state of Local Online Contents

I heard about the formation of a Blog Community on the rumour mill. By then BAKE was still in the oven, and I’ve only read about the acronym now. Certainly, a lot of thought and energy has gone into this and I applaud the bloggers who’ve been working tirelessly to come up with the umbrella body.

However, I have certain concerns that I’d like to raise here:

My fear is for us Kenyan bloggers to be turned into another “Fourth Estate” that is governed by principles and practices pre-determined by the ICT board, Media Council of Kenya (MCK) or whatever other arm of the GoK. The way I see it, the minute we cluster ourselves into a “non-mainstream association” (allow me to call it so) the easier it will be for some external government body/ parastatal to control us.

Also, there are already names in the Kenyan blogosphere that consider themselves “heavy weights”, majority of them I presume, who were behind the formation of BAKE. Granted, they have earned their status by virtue of their blog content and blogging consistency. What happens to the other starters and small timers? By creating a competitive climate in the Kenyan blogosphere, wouldn’t the starters find the stakes too high? Wouldn’t that discourage many future great bloggers, who’ll be trying to to get a piece of the BAKEd cake? (all pun intended). To me the whole notion of blogging is to even-out the playing field, something the mainstream media with its limiting editorial policies, principles and practices and its questionably ‘qualified’ journalists, has failed to do. Don’t forget, there’s a reason Kenyan urban youth now read more blogs than newspapers.

Thirdly, by creating our identity and stirring corporate appeal under an umbrella body, wouldn’t we be losing the plot? Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t the ideal blogger just a simple person (not necessarily a qualified writer), who’s got something on their mind and who wants to share his/her thoughts with the whole world, no matter how silly or serious? Why then have we Kenyan bloggers decided that advertising, expos, awards, lawd even comments become everything we live for? Yeah, I agree, to earn some cash from our blogs would be so dandy, and some have individually gone ahead to approach companies to advertise on their blogs. A small number have been successful. However, the majority, I’ll safely assume, haven’t been so successful. Is BAKE then a 2nd attempt at wooing advertisers? If not, how else will MAJORITY of Kenyan bloggers benefit from being members of BAKE?

Fourth, if we move in this direction, won’t we soon have to form a committee complete with a chairperson, vice chair, secretary etc. because it is apparent we will need an organizing committee to plan the expos, the award ceremonies and all that other mediocre stuff. Now, when the few heavy weights have amassed enough power and control in BAKE, and they’ve cashed in proper, from advertising as most of the advertising cake will certainly go to them anyway, won’t BAKE be coerced by the MCK or Media Owners Association (MOA) to fall under their mandate? If anything, we’d have already upset the status quo by re-directing advertising revenue that would have gone to their media establishments, to our blogs. The minute we do that, someone will have to trim us down to size, and it will be easier to get us as a unit (called BAKE), rather than as individual bloggers.

Five, I wouldn’t be surprised if one day Parliament enacts censorship laws on bloggers? Imagine how limiting that would be for Kenyan bloggers that run whistle blowing sites today or in the future. It’s not a far fetched idea. See how the Ministry of Transport has clustered matatus into Sacco’s. Now the Ministry has them by the nuts. So today they say a dustbin is compulsory, tomorrow they’ll tell them to have two different dustbins – one for recyclable stuff and the other for non-recyclable dirt.

To Kachwanya and the group behind BAKE, we’ve read how this association would benefit corporate clients, but would you give us bloggers just 10 ways we’d benefit from BAKE? Cash is good, but before we cash in our souls, please tell us the long term and short term benefits, and the risks involved?

BAKe is an ingenious undertaking, nothing but good things ahead.

there is nothing like local contents, its local content, its irritating to read that, like smoke in the eyes, or scratching your teeth against each other!!