Izak Minnaar is a journalist with print, broadcast and online experience. Until mid-2019 he was Editor: Digital News at the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) in Johannesburg.  He currently works as a media and elections consultant and trainer, focusing on a range of journalism, elections, media freedom, access to information, digital rights and other causes in South Africa and around the African continent.  

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.

For the past decade he focused 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 is active in several media industry bodies and initiatives, and regularly addresses conferences and training workshops on issues related to media, journalism, elections and digital rights. More info here.