Boxing Day: The only day Kenyans cannot access newspapers

This is because all publishers never produce copies on this day, a culture that has been adopted by newsrooms for eons.

This batch of Kenyans with an appetite for stroking the dailies are forced to clutch on papers published on Christmas Day, crabbily gazing at the clock as they count down the longest 24 hours in their year.

Publishers always take a break on December 25 because there is always scarce material to include in the dailies on 26, what has been colloquially termed in newsrooms as a 'dry day'.

Writers are then allowed the break to compile stories and articles for December 27 and the cycle continues. 

The digital platforms for these dailies however remain active on Boxing Day.

Speaking to Citizen Digital, veteran journalist Macharia Gaitho said that the culture has been long-adopted by Kenyan media as he intimated it was still present when he was undertaking his primary school education.

He holds that the culture might be borrowed from the British media after the colonial era.

"It's to give the staff a day off on Christmas. In fact, there used to be no paper on Boxing Day and maybe even on the 2nd of January because of the New Year's break," he said.

Those benefitting from the break, Gaitho added, are editors, production teams, printers and distributors. Reporters are not guaranteed the day off.

Kenya has three main publishers; The Standard Group, Nation Media Group and Radio Africa Group.

The Standard Group publishes The Standard, one of the largest newspapers in Kenya and the oldest newspaper in the country founded in 1902. 

At the time it was called the African Standard, a weekly paper, founded by an immigrant businessman from British India, Alibhai Mulla Jeevanjee. Jeevanjee sold the paper to Maia Anderson and Rudolf Franz Mayer, who changed the name to the East African Standard in 1905. 

It became a daily paper and moved its headquarters from Mombasa to Nairobi in 1910. Ownership then was handed to the British-based Lonrho Group in 1963 and the paper changed its name to The Standard in 1977 after Kenya gained its independence.

Standard Group also publishes a weekly paper called The Nairobian.

Nation Media Group (NMG), the most diversified publisher, founded Daily Nation in 1958. 

The paper was initially a Swahili weekly called Taifa founded by a former colonial officer Charles Hayes. The Aga Khan bought it in 1959 and made it a daily newspaper.

It was given the name Taifa Leo in January 1960 and its English edition called Daily Nation was first published in 1960.

NMG also publishes The East African, Daily Monitor and Business Daily.

Radio Africa Group publishes the Star Newspaper  which was launched in July 2007 as the Nairobi Star and later rebranded as The Star in 2009.