Rob Rose (South African journalist)
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Rob Rose | |
|---|---|
| Alma mater | University of the Witwatersrand |
| Occupation | Investigative journalist |
| Years active | 2000–present |
| Awards | |
Rob Rose is a South African business journalist who was editor of the Financial Mail between 2016 and 2024. A two-time winner of the Taco Kuiper Award for Investigative Journalism for his investigative reporting on corruption, he is currently a writer at Currency.
Rose studied at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he completed a BA in 1995 and an LLB in 2000.[1] While a law student, he worked briefly at Engineering News, and, after graduating, he decided to pursue a career in journalism only a few weeks into his articles.[1][2] Beginning at I-Net Bridge, he went on to work as a business journalist at Business Day from 2002 to 2007, when he joined the Financial Mail as a banking writer.[3][4]
Subsequently Rose joined the investigative reporting team at the Sunday Times, where he, Stephan Hofstatter, and Mzilikazi wa Afrika co-wrote a series of award-winning articles between 2011 and 2013.[5] Hofstatter and wa Afrika's team was later criticized for reporting fake news, including in one exposé which Rose had co-written about extrajudicial police killings by the so-called Cato Manor "death squad."[6][7] The Taco Kuiper Award for Investigative Journalism panel rescinded the runner-up award that the death squad story had received, describing the reporting as "shoddy and amateurish,"[8] and the Sunday Times voluntarily returned the story's other awards, including several Sikuvile (Mondi Shanduka) Journalism Awards.[9][10]
After a stint as editor of the Sunday Times's Business Times from 2013,[4] Rose returned to the Financial Mail in 2015. He was deputy editor of the Financial Mail under editor Tim Cohen, and he replaced Cohen as editor in 2016.[11] He led the magazine for eight years before resigning at the end of January 2024.[12][13] Thereafter he joined Currency, a new financial news publication that launched in September 2024.[14][15] He is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.[16]
Books
Rose's first book, The Grand Scam: How Barry Tannenbaum Conned South Africa's Business Elite, was published in 2014 by Zebra Press and investigated Barry Tannenbaum's corporate fraud, a story which Rose had broken at the Financial Mail in June 2009.[17][18]
His second book, Steinheist: Markus Jooste, Steinhoff and SA's Biggest Corporate Fraud, covered Markus Jooste and the Steinhoff scandal.[19] Published in 2018 by NB Publishers, it won the Recht Malan Prize at the 2019 Media24 Books Literary Awards.[20] It was adapted into a docuseries of the same name, featuring interviews with Rose, which premiered on Showmax in 2022.[21]
