Jeff Koinange is Back !

Kenya's much renowned and famed former CNN reporter Jeff Koinange is back in the country and has found his place helping Kenya's first 24 hour news chanel K24 set up its operations.

His humble gesture is certainly to be much appreciated seeing that the new tv channel K-24 is hardly a month old and has barely experienced newscasters .Most of whom are newbies from media institutions with little or no experience.Jeff is probably one of Africa's most experienced and highly profiled journalist having worked for reuters from 1995 to 2001 (during which period for the latter 3 years served as its Chief Producer-African Region) and therafter joined CNN after short stints at NBC and ABC in the United States.The year 2006 saw him collect a number of awards for his work, including a Television EMMY for coverage of the Niger Famine, in his piece entiled ‘Starving in Plain Sight’,he was also part of the CNN team that was granted the Peabody Award for coverage of Hurricane Katrina,

His other accolades inlude winning the Prix des Lyceens Basse-Normandie for coverage of rape victims in the DRC, and the National Association of Black Journalists award for work on the famine in Malawi, Desperation in Malawi’. This last package also earned Koinange the 2005 Vernon Jarrett Award from the Institute of Advanced Journalism at the North Carolina A&T State University for ‘Best Feature’. In 2002, Koinange’s coverage of the crisis in Liberia earned him second runner-up in the Headliner Awards in the USA. In 1999, Koinange was a finalist in the Prix Bayeux for his coverage of the war in Sierra Leone.He was also a panellist on the CNN African Journalist of the Year Award judging committee and a regular Masters of Ceremonies for the event. Jeff holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in broadcast journalism from New York University.

His illustrious career however was brought shortly to a halt mid this year after allegations that he had stage managed a story in the Niger Delta about rebeels and an alleged affair with one Marriane Brinner(that being neither here or there) but what is openly apparent is that Jeff is still highly talented and accomplished individual and like any other human had his own faults but i guess we cannot simply continue to focus on someones past or mistakes for we have our own!

The Channel K-24 is an initiative of local media moghul Rose Kimotho(proprietor of Kenya 's first vernacular and much popular fm radio station Kameme FM).The new channel faces the challenge of keeping the viewers informed with relevant news 24-7 without running the same news over and over again.Futhermore the other challenge will be reporting news live as it happens and the reporters will be breaking new grounds as news anchoring is relatively new even with the accomplished local television channels such as Kenya Television Network(KTN),Citizen Tv and NTV.It is hoped that despite apparent teething problems the news channel will pioneer new grounds in the region resulting in the populace being much more informed especially with news as it occurs.

It is further hoped that the news channel will audition more new faces to especially mirror the diversity that Kenya has and further recruit more local talent of various backgrounds and age groups as there seems to be an evident monopoly especially by very young Kenyans from a particular divide! (its encouraging but yet sometimes media talent may lie with the more experienced as is the case of Njoroge Mwaura and Catherine Kasavule ...etc).The station should be more conscious of public perception especially in this highly polarised environment.But as usual Kenyans generally support local initiatives that genuinely mirror their uniqueness and diversity and showcase the beauty of Kenya

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