Editor of The Star Kevin Ritchie links the significance of their city-central roots with The Sun International CEO SleepOut™
Iconic Johannesburg daily The Star couldn't resist the opportunity to take part in this year's The Sun International CEO SleepOut™. Editor Kevin Ritchie reflects on how 129 years of being located in the heart of the city means their paper has a heart for Joburg's people.
If you don't read it daily, you more than likely grew up around the iconic red Gaelic font that graces numerous newsstands in the city of Joburg - The Star. Editor Kevin Ritchie unpacks the significance of participating in this year's The Sun International CEO SleepOut™: “We’ve come in this year and we were very impressed with the process at the initial initiative last year, but when it moved into the CBD - and of course we’ve been here for the last 129 years, in the same premises - we heard it was going to be on the (Nelson Mandela) Bridge that joins Braamfontein and the Joburg CBD, we had to be a part of it.”
Kevin reflects further on the plight of the homeless: “When we see the homeless and with The CEO Sleepout TM - it gives us an opportunity to dovetail with a whole bunch of other charities that we’ve been running with for decades. Chief amongst them is Operation Snowball, which provides warm meals and blankets to the homeless, that we’ve been running for many years, but in the last couple of years, it’s been with Gift of the Givers and Imtiaz Sooliman .”
Kevin was educated in Scotland and Michaelhouse in South Africa, Ritchie holds a BA in law and African Political Studies from Rhodes University in Grahamstown, and a post graduate diploma in media studies from that university’s School of Journalism.
He began his career in Kimberley in 1991 on the Diamond Fields Advertiser, the country’s smallest daily newspaper and covered the end of apartheid and South Africa’s transition to democracy from the world’s erstwhile diamond capital.
He became editor in 1993 at the age of 28 and manager in 1996. He ran the paper until 2003, complete with its own presses, first under the auspices of the Argus Printing and Publishing Company and then Anthony O’Reilly’s Independent News and Media.
Ritchie moved to Johannesburg in 2003 to take over Independent Newspapers’ Special Projects Division, where he was responsible for conceptualizing and executing group wide supplements and sponsored features and meeting a budget of R50-million. 18 months later, he moved back to the news division, where he ultimately headed the group’s editorial synergy division, co-ordinating the editorial planning of 18 newspapers in five different centres across South Africa and managing internal and external syndication contracts.
This was followed by a five year stint as managing editor of the Saturday Star, the country’s biggest Saturday newspaper, before moving to The Star in 2012 as deputy editor and then last year, becoming editor in his own right of the group’s flagship 128 year old daily title.
Kevin has nominated Gauteng Premier David Makhura and Johannesburg's Executive Mayor Parks Tau to Rise Up To The Challenge #4Leaders4Change