Edna Machirori is a Zimbabwean journalist. She was the first black woman news editor in Zimbabwe, as news editor of The Chronicle, and the first black woman editor of a mainstream Zimbabwean newspaper, as editor-in-chief of The Financial Gazette.[1] In 2013 she won an IWMF Lifetime Achievement Award.[2]
Life
While at school Machirori started writing letters to the editor at the nationalist African Daily News, and in 1963 joined the newspaper as a cadet journalist. At that time she was the first woman on the newspaper's staff, and started a new women's page there,[3] before colonial authorities banned the paper in 1964.[4]
In 1974 Machirori left Zimbabwe on a scholarship to study at the New York Institute of Technology, gaining a BA in Communications in 1979. She worked as a media officer for the Zimbabwe Council of Churches, before returning to journalism as a senior reporter at The Chronicle.There she rose through the ranks, eventually becoming news editor. In 1988, under her leadership, the paper broke the Willowgate scandal, an investigation into ZANU-PF corruption, which led to the resignation of five cabinet ministers and subsequent newspaper censorship in Zimbabwe.[3]
In 2004 Machirori became features editor at The Financial Gazette, writing two political columns, 'Africa File' and 'Personal Glimpses' under a pseudonym. In 2006 ZANU-PF officials uncovered her identity and subjected her to personal and political attack.[3]