The New York Times: Lynsey Chutel moves to London

Lynsey Chutel

We are thrilled to announce that Lynsey Chutel will be joining the London newsroom as a general assignment reporter for the International desk.

As a reporter-researcher in the Johannesburg bureau, Lynsey brought deft news judgment and strong reporting skills to some of the biggest stories in her patch, while bringing to life people and places across the region. In her new role, Lynsey, who has also been a contributor to The Times’s international morning newsletters, will bring her skills to a broader array of topics and story formats.

“Lynsey knows how to make people comfortable and get them talking, even in the most sensitive situations,” said Laurie Goodstein, a deputy International editor who oversees Africa coverage. “And then she is tenacious, returning time and again to knock on a door until it opens.”

Lynsey started as a stringer for The Times in Johannesburg, playing an indispensable role when South Africa became the epicenter of the Covid outbreak in Africa. Once on staff, she moved to cover a wide range of breaking news, including the funeral for the anti-apartheid hero Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the political rebirth of South Africa’s ex-president Jacob Zuma.

She has profiled the children who died in a huge building fire in Johannesburg and showed the real-world impact of climate change on people who farm and fish in Madagascar. For the Times series Old World/Young Africa, Lynsey spent a year following a group of young women searching for jobs.

One of her biggest strengths has been her willingness to experiment with new story formats. In a photo-driven story with the photographer João Silva, she showed how South Africans live with frequent power blackouts, and she took readers with her to Comic Con in Johannesburg.

“Lynsey possessed a wealth of knowledge and history about a wide range of complicated issues in South Africa,” said John Eligon, the Johannesburg bureau chief. “She translated that knowledge into storytelling that was essential for Times readers to understand the country and the region.”

Before The Times, Lynsey started the Africa desk at News24, one of South Africa’s largest news outlets, where she was also its lead writer. Her Africa Brief newsletter for Foreign Policy magazine landed in email inboxes each week. Lynsey has also worked as a correspondent for The Associated Press and Quartz.

She speaks Afrikaans, German and basic French. She is an author of the book “Coloured: How Classification Became Culture.” Published in September 2023, it has prompted broad discussions among South Africans about this enduring yet misunderstood racial categorization.

Please join us in congratulating Lynsey. She starts in June.