EA Standard Re-launch

Image courtesy of The Standard
In an attempt to score points with its readers and improve circulation numbers, the East African Standard last night held a re-launch at a local entertainment spot. Renamed THE STANDARD, this sees the ongoing re-branding of most publications taken a notch higher.
The management has over the last 5 years been busy packaging and re-packaging the paper to reach out to a wider local and regional audience. Print media has seen some interesting times in the last 12 months with at least 3 dailies being launched thus increasing competition across the board. EA Standard though has remained on its own as one flagship product and not like their main competitor who has more than 3 sister papers catering for different tastes. The tag-line is a bit of a mouthful though and doesn't stick to mind as quickly as it ought to.
My main interest though was in the sports segment which as usual is relegated to the last pages. But the new look was a first with the paper literally making us flip the pages 180 °C to enjoy the menu. There were at least 6 pages to work with. Another for the local papers was the Sports Finance section. I don’t know whether it’s going to be a daily feature or not, but sports and its commercialisation is something most local publications have not focused on well. The writer in the section covered the Olympics and its effects on host countries…..Though I had hoped he would have given a more local comparison with our own hosting of the All-Africa Games in 1987.
The only daily which has been trying to have some sort of sports business segment is the Business Daily which is not consistent and most of the time uses articles from syndicates and more established publications.
The paper also tried including much local content maybe due to the fact much of the sporting events which would be of interest in the local context are in their summer breaks. The print looks good better than the previous one and also the lay-out and images have a better view.
In addition to this, the website has been spruced up and also looks better and is faster to open with easy navigational paths.
Overall though, it’s a good break from the rest, I just hope for sustenance and also deeper insight and research when writing the articles since this has been a penchant of this particular publication which some more seasoned newspaper readers say is a matured tabloid.
Buy yourself a copy of The Standard !