Katharine Viner

Katharine Viner (born 1971) is a British journalist and playwright. She became the first female editor-in-chief at The Guardian on 1 June 2015 succeeding Alan Rusbridger. Viner previously headed The Guardian's web operations in Australia and the US, before being selected for the editor-in-chief's position.

Raised in Yorkshire, the daughter of teachers, her grandfather Vic Viner was an able seaman involved in the Dunkirk evacuation. Viner was educated at Ripon Grammar School, where she was head girl. Her first newspaper article, published in The Guardian in 1987 while she was still at school, was on the ending of the GCE O level examinations, which were being replaced in the UK by the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE). "Cramming five years of knowledge into two and a half hours does not seem to be a fair system," she wrote. Around 1988, Viner had a period of work experience at the Ripon Gazette, her local newspaper.

Subsequently Viner read English at Pembroke College, Oxford. Just before her finals, Viner won a competition organised by The Guardian's women's page and was advised by Louise Chunn, then Guardian women's editor, to pursue a career in journalism. "I honestly thought journalism wasn't for me, I thought it was for men in suits in London", she remembered in 2005. During her 20s, Viner spent most of her holidays in the Middle East, a region for which she has a particular interest, spending time in Lebanon, Syria, Israel, the West Bank and other locations.

For work experience, Viner joined Cosmopolitan, a women's monthly magazine. The magazine retained her afterwards and she became features assistant, then news and careers editor. After three years at The Sunday Times, working as a commissioning editor and writer for the magazine, Viner joined The Guardian in 1997. Following a period on the staff of the women's page, she became editor of the Saturday Weekend supplement in 1998. She became features editor in 2006 and deputy editor in 2008 at the same time as Ian Katz. Viner edited the Saturday edition of The Guardian from 2008 to 2012.

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