Izak Minnaar is a journalist
with print, broadcast and online experience and is currently Editor: Digital News at the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) in Johannesburg. He is responsible for the public broadcaster’s news website, the SABC News YouTube channel and SABC News radio, TV and online newsroom online and social media activities.
He started his career in print media and ended up in roles such as chief sub editor and deputy news editor at a daily newspaper, before moving to SABC News. In the early nineties he was in charge of SABC’s TV news magazine programmes (including Good Morning South Africa on SABC2) as well as current affairs, cultural and talk shows.
From 1994 he was involved in South African election coverage, election results analysis, online news initiatives and major special broadcast projects. He founded the SABC’s News Research unit in 1998, doing content planning and development with TV, radio and online news teams.
His current focus is on developing multiplatform content production and dissemination strategies and initiatives, utilising the SABC newsrooms’ multimedia and social media production capacity to provide online news services to the South African provincial and 11 language communities, as well as national, continental and international audiences.
Minnaar regularly presents courses, guest lectures and conference inputs on topics such as online journalism, social media, information management in the newsroom, online tools, data journalism, election coverage and election results analysis.
He serves on the councils of the South African National Editors’ Forum as well as the IAB SA Publishers’ Council, which represents the South African online industry.