John Allen

John Allen, newly-appointed managing editor of the African news website, AllAfrica.com, is a South African journalist with experience in newspapers, news agencies, a journalists’ union, churches and South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Born in Zimbabwe to South African parents, he left school to become a journalist on The Star, Johannesburg, where his reporting included political trials, education and the churches. After 11 years and a short spell with the SA Press Association, he became a full-time official of a journalists’ union—which he also served as president—for five years.

He became press secretary to Desmond Tutu—upon whom he had reported since 1976—after Tutu was elected Anglican archbishop of Cape Town in 1986. In 1996 he moved with Tutu to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and in 1998 accompanied Tutu to run his office at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta in the United States for two years.

Upon leaving Tutu’s office in 2000, he spent three months helping the founders of All Africa Global Media in Washington DC to establish the website AllAfrica.com. From 2000 to 2004, he was director of communications at Trinity Church, Wall Street, New York, (incorporating St. Paul’s Chapel, Broadway) where he helped the parish leadership during and after the attack on the World Trade Center of September 11. He has won awards in South Africa for defence of press freedom and in the U.S. for excellence in church journalism.

John Allen returned to South Africa in 2004 to write the authorised biography of Desmond Tutu. He also assisted the international telecommunications staff of the Anglican Consultative Council to launch and operate a website showcasing news from autonomous Anglican churches around the world, with a special emphasis on empowering churches in the Global South to post their news to the web. He is a member of the congregation of St. George’s Cathedral, Cape Town.

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