The Daily Nation, on Sunday, October 20, kickstarted a new move to ensure their various publications were protected from unauthorised modes of sale.
One of the vendors, while speaking to Kenyans.co.ke, claimed that the publishers were against people who just schemed through the papers at the various stands and left without making an actual purchase.
"Customers sometimes steal popular pullouts and leave the newspaper without them, forcing the seller to foot the cost," the vendor - who preferred anonymity, disclosed.
Vendors were willing to 'rent' out the various newspapers at a small fee of Ksh 20, provided the reader went through the paper on the spot.
However, in a bid to curtail the losses sustained via 'renting' out newspapers, the Nation Media Group, sent out sealed publications on Mashujaa day.
The vendor further revealed that the renown publication had tried to implement the move before, by sending out papers that were bound using special seals.
On their part, the country's leading news publication maintained that they were out to protect loss of potential revenue, in the ever-dwindling market of customers willing to buy a newspaper.
Speaking to Kenyans.co.ke, a journalist at one of NMG's various publications affirmed that the move was one of the ways in which they were looking to curb on losses as well as stay afloat at a time when other media houses were conducting mass-firings.
The source also intimated that although The Standard & The Star were yet to follow suit by sealing their papers, in the long run, this particular approach could be the method of choice by all major publications.
Back on September 30, 2019, Mediamax - which owns K24, announced the re-organisation of its staff structures in a move that saw a number of employees lose their jobs in the media house.
In a statement seen by Kenyans.co.ke, acting CEO Ken Ngaruyia stated that the measure was necessitated by the recent economic downturn and loss of its major revenue streams.
The last-ditch move to seal their papers came on a day when they had placed a 48-page pull-out of the various Kenyan legends that were worth a mention during the day marked to celebrate national heroes, where marathoner Eliud Kipchoge was presented with Elder of the Order of the Golden Heart (EGH) by President Uhuru Kenyatta.
