From Print to Pixels: Why I Founded Visual Data Insights

In a world increasingly defined by its information density, clarity is no longer a luxury — it's a necessity. In 2024 alone, the average number of daily online newspaper visitors in Kenya surged to 5.4 million, a 9.8% year-on-year increase. At the same time, traditional print readership is in freefall. English-language daily newspapers — once a bastion of public discourse — saw circulation shrink by 12.3%, sliding to 37 million copies, continuing a trend that began at the dawn of the digital age.

Let's explore this in a chart

*Daily Newspaper are both English and Swahili

This is not just a story about paper versus pixels. It’s a profound economic and social shift — one that reshapes how people engage with truth, data, and storytelling.

A Landscape in Transition

Consider the longer arc: since 2020, printed English daily newspapers in Kenya have seen circulation drop from 62.8 million copies to 37 million — a near 41% decline in just four years. Kiswahili dailies followed a similar trajectory, falling 32% over the same period. Even weekly publications, which once enjoyed a dedicated weekend audience, have not been spared.

Yet, while newsprint withers, digital readership blooms.

This divergence, mirrored globally, signals something deeper than format preference — it reflects a demand for information that is not just accessible but intuitive, interactive, and visual. The average citizen now confronts more data than ever before, yet struggles more than ever to make sense of it.

Seeing the Signals in the Noise

That’s why I founded Visual Data Insights — a platform built not just to display data, but to tell stories with it.

In a digital ecosystem flooded with facts, spreadsheets, and static charts, we asked: What if people could see what the data is telling them — instantly? What if business leaders, students, policy analysts, and everyday readers could cut through the complexity and engage with issues in ways that are visually compelling and cognitively clear?

Data has never been more abundant. And paradoxically, that abundance has made insight scarcer. The need to convert information into action, and numbers into narratives, has become mission-critical.

The Economics of Attention

In economic terms, attention is the scarcest resource of the digital age. Traditional media, constrained by print cycles and column inches, once curated this attention with editorial gatekeeping. Now, the gate is open — and the flood is overwhelming.

Visual Data Insights sits at the confluence of design, journalism, and analytics. We harness the power of infographics, dynamic visualizations, and human-centered data narratives to help users not only consume information — but understand it, remember it, and use it.

Beyond the Newsroom

The shift we’re witnessing is not merely from newspapers to news apps. It is from linear, one-way information flows to multi-sensory, user-driven experiences. Visual storytelling is no longer a niche — it's the new literacy. From economic surveys and market data to public policy and healthcare outcomes, we believe every dataset has a story worth telling.

The plummeting circulation figures of print media are not the end of journalism — they are a call to reimagine how we engage with the truth.

At Visual Data Insights, we’re answering that call — one chart, one story, and one visual breakthrough at a time.