Times Media has announced more staff moves, with Bongani Siqoko taking on the editorship of the Daily Dispatch, and current editor, Brendan Boyle, moving back to Cape Town to in the role of an executive editor with particular responsibility for political coverage. Simnikiwe Xabanisa has appointed sports editor for the whole Times Media Group.
Siqoko, currently deputy editor of the Daily Dispatch, will assume editorship from 1 June. He will be spending three months at Times Media’s headquarters in Rosebank before returning to East London to start in his new position.
Boyle will be working alongside new Sunday Times editor, Phylicia Oppelt, where he will play a key role in shaping Sunday Times’ political coverage in the build-up to the 2014 elections. He will also be responsible for the paper’s crucial leader pages.
“Brendan has done a great job in stabilising the Daily Dispatch in his time as editor, and has been instrumental in setting the paper on its current growth path despite difficult trading conditions,” says Mike Robertson, managing director of Times Media.
Xabanisa enters his new role as Times Media Group’s sports editor as from March 2013. As a former Sunday Times rugby writer who started in the sports department in 2000, he has won numerous awards including the SAB Sports Writers’ Most Promising Newcomer Award (2001), the Vodacom Media Awards Sports Writer of the Year (2008), and the Sasol Rugby Writers’ Springbok Writer of the Year award. He will replace Archie Henderson who will be joining the Sunday Times in a senior capacity.
