FOLLY OF AN ALL KNOWING AUDIENCE ASSUMPTION

A primary roles of the media is to inform. The audience expects to either learn something useful or be enlightened about somebody or something significant. This does not imply that the average member of the audience is not well-informed. And neither is he or she all-knowing. On first mention of key details, the assumption should therefore never be that the information is obvious.

In the newspaper article above, the reader is likely to be flying rudderless, simply because there's no editorial support to aid in the contexualization of the details, and hence the understanding of the news story.

The intro talks about 'Members of the Country Assembly'...and inconveniently neglects to mention the particular county in question.

If Kenya has 47 counties, how is the reader expected to zero in on the one the editor is referring to?

There are names being thrown around like all the readers are all well-acquainted with the personalities being mentioned.

These may well be public figures, but the paper should not assume they are well-known by the public.