Tim Knight is a British/Canadian/South African Emmy and Sigma Delta Chi winning journalist, filmmaker, writer and journalism trainer.

His latest project is Story Editor on Richard Wicksteed’s 1-hour film “SanDance, A journey to the heart of Africa’s original dance culture”, shot in Botswana’s Kalahari. It’s the story of the SanDance Festival, largest annual gathering of Southern Africa’s First Peoples. Already, it’s won Best Feature Documentary at 2021 Paris Film Festival, Best Feature Documentary at the Bucharest Film Awards and Impact DOCS Award of Excellence for Documentary Feature, Native American / Aboriginal Peoples.

Over the years he’s worked for The Natal Mercury, Rand Daily Mail, Zambia TV, United Press International (three years, two Congo wars), and ten years as reporter, writer and documentary producer with ABC, NBC and PBS out of New York. 

For another ten years he was Executive Producer and lead Trainer for all the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) TV journalists. 

In 1993/1994 he led a team of Canadian trainers tasked with helping turn the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) from fascist state broadcaster to democratic public broadcaster in time for the election. The SABC’s coverage earned international praise.

Over the years, Knight has trained thousands of professional broadcast journalists, filmmakers and writers in hundreds of workshops in a dozen countries. And produced, directed, written and narrated some 30 broadcast documentaries himself.

His most recent documentary series is Inside Noah’s Ark, the 3-hour wildlife trilogy shot in Pilanesberg and the Tswalu Kalahari Reserve, which he Executive Produced, co-Directed, Wrote and Narrated. It’s a Canadian-South African co-production, broadcast on Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, PBS and 13 international networks. 

The series’ focus is that most African wildlife reserves are no longer truly wild but because of human need, greed and ignorance have become little more than huge zoos, giant ranches. 

Four years ago, Knight moved from Toronto, Canada, to Cape Town where he offers workshops on storytelling, writing, speechmaking, interviewing and performing.

His first assignment in South Africa was covering the attempted military coup in Lesotho as Foreign Correspondent for The Journalist.

In 2015 he was Story Editor on Striking A Chord, three Vision in Africa (VIA) documentaries broadcast by the SABC. One of the three, Emo Adams — Tall, Dark & Afrikaans, was nominated for Best Documentary and Best Direction at the South African Film and Television Awards (SAFTA).

That same year in Madrid, he delivered two 4-hour seminars on Saving the Soul of TV Journalism at Spain’s public TV network, TVE.

In 2016, he was commissioned by the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism to train SABC Radio producers and interviewers in Advanced Interviewing Skills.

Since then he’s been Story Editor and Consultant on CO.ZA, a 26 half-hour travel show on Media24. And Associate Producer and Script Consultant on Sylvia Vollenhoven’s The Keeper of the Kumm, a play and film about the search for Khoi-San identity.

Today he’s consultant for VIA commissioned as an Industry Professional to do Master Classes and Workshops with the University of Johannesburg Humanities Faculty, Journalism, Film & Television Department.

Tim Knight is the author of three books including Storytelling and the Anima Factor, now in its second edition. 

Tim Knight + Associates coaches broadcast journalists in communication; storytelling, story structure, writing, interviewing and performance.

But it doesn’t matter who you are or what you do — journalist, politician, businessperson, professional, salesperson, police officer, public speaker, student or anything else — we can help you get your message across.

We’re here to help you communicate.