Recently appointed editor of the Daily Sun, Mazwi Xaba, has resigned. Xaba, who left Isolezwe to take the helm of South Africa’s most popular daily tabloid newspaper, joined the Sun papers in May this year.
“I can confirm that Mazwi Xaba has resigned and he will not continue at the helm of the paper into the New Year. It was an amicable departure and the entire management team of the Suns [Daily Sun and Sunday Sun] wish him well in his future endeavours,” said general manager, Minette Ferreira.
Ferreira said the newspapers’ two deputy editors, Ben Viljoen and Reggy Moalusi, “remain as the anchors within the newsroom in their defined leadership roles”.
However, veteran journalists and editor, Jeremy Gordin, has joined the company, Ferreria confirmed.
“Jeremy Gordin joined us recently as a coach for our senior editorial staff. He has agreed to fulfil the role of publisher on a contract basis whilst we restart our recruitment drive,” she told The Media Online.
Gordin served as the associate editor of The Sunday Independent, The Sunday Tribune and The Sunday Argus for three years prior to joining Wits University where he is director of the Investigative Journalism Workshop’s Justice Project at Wits University.
Asked whether the Greg Nicolson story on the Daily Maverick website had anything to do with Xaba’s leaving, Ferreira said the story had “dealt with very decisively by the newspaper in our front page response the day following the Daily Maverick article and subsequent follow ups. Internally the matter was dealt with by the news management team”.
The Daily Maverick accused the Daily Sun of fusing “two completely separate stories into one for maximum dramatic effect, falsely identified Zimbabweans as criminals, and failed to condemn mob justice”.
