Digital media house Hivisasa.com on Wednesday, January 29, announced the shutting down all its news production activities after six years of operations, consequently sending all its employees home.
The media house, which prides itself on having had a steady audience of two million monthly readers cited failure to identify a viable advertisement-led business model, as the reason for the unprecedented closure.
Founder and CEO, Chloe Spoerry, stated that the decision had been arrived at to allow the company to 'explore new ideas and opportunities'.
"We have made the hard decision to close down the current model of local news production, in order to explore new ideas and opportunities. A special thank you to our brilliant and dedicated team, and to our loyal readers," read a part of a press statement authored by the founder.
Hivisasa's decision continues the worrying narrative media layoffs due to the hard economic times and failing advertisement-driven model.
In October 2019, Mediamax Network Limited fired 160 employees, a month after they were issued notices by the company.
The media house laid off its highly salaried, all editors and senior news reporters in the exercise.
"As a company, we've tried everything, we looked at all the conditions including economic conditions and tried to minimize the effects of the proposed redundancy. We have followed all the due legal processes to ensure that the redundancy effect and the process is done in the best way possible.
"It's been a difficult one month for everyone and it doesn't go unnoticed," Ken Ngaruiya, the Company CEO stated.
Yet again, at the beginning of the year, Switch TV made major staffing changes in line with its growth strategy.
The first casualties of the changes were Chatspot hosts Nonny Gathoni and Jackie Matubia who were let go in early January.
