Alicestine October

I am the Deputy Editor of Spotlight, an online publication of SECTION27 and the TAC. I started in this position in September 2019.

At present my job, among others, involves managing Spotlight’s news diary and freelancers with the editor, Marcus Low. I research, commission and edit articles for and of our freelancers and also write articles myself. At Spotlight we focus on high-quality, in-depth public health journalism and I am very proud to be part of such an important endeavour of telling the stories of our health systems, health policy response and implementation, and most importantly the people dependent on health services.

The passion and enthusiasm for social justice of my SECTION27 colleagues, is what inspires me and what makes me want to stick around. The team mirrors all the values I hold dear and it is profoundly humbling to work with such dedicated, accomplished individuals. I love my job!

I previously worked in mainstream media and was a parliamentary reporter in Media24’s Parliamentary Bureau for many years. I also worked at Media24’s Africa desk in Johannesburg where I covered elections on the continent, sittings of the Pan African Parliament, SADC summits, and African Union summits, before I dipped my toes in the NGO sector. My academic background is in law, politics and media and my job allows me to use all these skills every day which is very exciting.