Katharine Viner (born 1971, Yorkshire, England) is a British journalist and editor who became the first woman to serve as editor in chief (2015– ) of The Guardian.
Interested in journalism from her teens, Viner published her first article in The Guardian—one of the United Kingdom’s most-influential daily newspapers—in 1987 while still attending Ripon Grammar School in North Yorkshire. After she graduated from Ripon in 1989, she studied English at Pembroke College, Oxford, and then worked briefly for the U.K. edition of Cosmopolitan magazine before joining The Sunday Times newspaper as a features writer in 1994. Three years later she was hired by The Guardian, where she initially specialized in lifestyle coverage. For her work on the paper’s Saturday magazine, Guardian Weekend, she was named (2002) Newspaper Magazine Editor of the Year by the British Society of Magazine Editors. During that period she was also on the board of the Royal Court Theatre in London and collaborated with British actor Alan Rickman to compile the one-woman play My Name Is Rachel Corrie (2005) from the writings of an American pro-Palestinian activist who died in 2003 while protesting in the Gaza Strip.
After serving (2008–12) as deputy editor of The Guardian, Viner oversaw the highly successful 2013 launch of Guardian Australia, the newspaper’s online Australian edition. Under her leadership Guardian Australia saw its number of unique monthly visitors grow to more than five million in less than a year, and the site was widely commended for its coverage of climate change and immigration issues. In mid-2014 Viner became editor in chief of Guardian US, the organization’s New York City-based digital edition.
In June 2015 Viner formally replaced Alan Rusbridger as editor in chief of The Guardian. In addition to being the first woman to hold the post, she was only the 12th editor in chief in the newspaper’s nearly 200-year history. She was also simultaneously named a director of the Guardian Media Group, of which the Sunday newspaper The Observer was also a part. Viner’s experience as a leader in digital media was considered a key factor in her landing the top editorial post at The Guardian, which had experienced increasing growth from its online publications; its main Web site, theguardian.com, was among the most popular English-language newspaper sites in the world.