Sometimes the journalism world can move quickly after all. In just a couple of short years, an idea that took flight in Sierra Leone, a standalone independent journalism fund that is designed, governe...
Kate Skinner
Kate Skinner has been a media freedom activist in South Africa since 1994. She previously chaired the board of the Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI) and, in 2008, founded Save Our SABC (SOS), a civil society campaign and lobby group dedicated to strengthening the sustainability of the public broadcaster. In 2012, she shifted her focus to academia, completing her PhD in 2017 on public service broadcasting in the digital age. She was appointed Executive Director of the South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) in February 2018 and, in July 2021, took over as Executive Director of the Association of Independent Publishers (AIP), which represents community media across online and print platforms. A key focus of AIP has been enhancing the sustainability of community media, including outlets serving specific geographic areas and communities of interest—such as arts, sports, business, agriculture, and health.
Most recently, she has led the establishment of the Digital News Transformation Fund, supported by Google, which aims to develop a cohort of sustainable community media publishers in the evolving digital landscape. Kate has authored and contributed to numerous academic articles and papers. In 2022, she co-edited Women Journalists in South Africa, published by Palgrave Macmillan, which explores the diverse contributions of women journalists to South Africa’s democracy.
Events IJF 2025