I bought The New Vision newspaper for the first time in many months last week. When was the last time I bought a copy of a newspaper and New Vision in particular? So long that I can hardly remember. More than a year has passed since I bought a personal copy.
I was, therefore, not prepared for the shock I received when I sat down with my copy of the Weekend Vision for June 14-15, 2025. The decline in quality took my breath away. The merging of Saturday and Sunday Vision that occurred January 20, 2024 has not resulted in a richer product. The worst of the two products is what Weekend Vision is instead.
Saturday Vision used to focus on sports, sports analysis, gossip events of the week, concert reviews with a light dabbling of social commentary. John Nagenda’s One Man’s Week column was often the most serious that Saturday paper allowed itself to get.
Sunday Vision excelled at compiling the most engaging, in depth political, economic and social commentary. Page after page for the first about 15. Then it careened into whimsical but entertaining society ruminations, modern takes on historic events, special investigative reports before the true crime genre became widespread. A thick meal you could happily chew into the new week for how carefully it had been put together.
Weekend Vision is neither of those two products. It is a watered down imitation of what a weekend paper is supposed to be.
The first shock was the quality of the news print. The paper quality. The marque edition of the New Vision corporation that is Weekend Vision is printed on paper that looks worn, cheap and disposable.
Next was how the big font layout of the headline articles was jarring with their contrast of colours from black to blue to navy blue and a dash of red. A headline would begin in funeral black, halfway become jaunty blue and abruptly return to Bata shoe polish black. The sprinkling of images on the page, invariably portraits of the dull bureaucratic kind, far from appealing.
The real horror waited inside. For many years, Sunday Vision has not been what it once was when it had a superstar assemblage of the best editors and writers in the country 2000 to 2008. This was the Sunday Vision that had Joachim Buwembo, Simon Kaheru, David Muhkoli, Lilliane Barenzi, Wamala, Ernest Bazanye, Tina Turyagenda, Esther Namugoji churning out quality paper every weekend like magicians pulling a rabbit out of a hat.
Unbelievable! That Sunday Vision has been gone for many years but the legacy lingers on and New Vision has lived off it this many decades since.
Weekend Vision’s atrocious quality, weekend after weekend, is putting that memory to bed once and for all.
In years past, a special report like “Who Wanted Compassion Boss Dead?” would have been full of information and findings a reader had not met anywhere else. At the bare minimum, after reading it, one would come away with a clear idea of who the finger of suspicion was pointing at and why.
Who Wanted Compassion Boss Dead? Is a poorly written regurgitation of what has for days been available on various social media account timelines from X, Facebook and in Tik Tok videos.
Worse, the story staggers all over the chronology of events leading to Godfrey Wayengera’s June 9 demise that you come out of it confused, wondering why you have cared who he was and why his shocking murder matters. The rest of the paper does not get better.
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Finally someone sensible has told them off. We have been so tired of the shit they are giving us. I’d rather go and listen to bloggers instead of reading lies that are presented on a very low quality paper. I wonder why they are still publishing at all. Can’t they see that people aren’t buying their papers anymore? You buy a new vision copy and your whole office is smelling like rat poison. I wonder what kind of ink they use to print on those poor quality stationary