By Adam Wakefield

Grobler’s mother had always told her, “Whatever you do, don’t become a journalist”. Such advice did not emerge from an ignorant position, for her husband and Grobler’s father, Hannes de Wet, was a distinguished journalist who retired as executive editor a few years ago from the now-defunct SA Press Association (Sapa).

“My dad left journalism when I started high school and because of his new job, he was based in Parliament where he did media liaison for minister Gerrit Viljoen and later FW de Klerk. I was in boarding school here in Johannesburg so I really didn’t have much to do with his world and oddly enough, my parents never really discussed politics with me,” Grobler says at Media24’s Johannesburg offices.

“For example, I had no idea who Nelson Mandela was when he was released from prison when I was 14-years-old. I watched his release with my grandmother in a small Free State town; and I only realised from her reaction this was a historical event."

Following her mother’s advice, Grobler went to what is now known as North West University’s Potchefstroom campus and enrolled to do a marketing degree.

“My dad never tried to influence me to do journalism, and to keep myself busy, I started working at the student newspaper,” Grobler says. “You know, once you start, you are addicted, and I changed my majors to journalism from marketing. I remember the day I told my dad. ‘I’m really loving the student newspaper’ and he just smiled and said ‘OK’. From then onwards, I was hooked.”

Grobler says De Wet’s influence over her career only really started when she joined him in 2008 at Sapa, the independent national newswire, having previously worked at Punt Geselsradio, Agence France-Presse (AFP), and The Media magazine.

“Everything I know, I learnt from him. He definitely played a huge influence on how I worked and how I advanced my career. I always ask for his advice first,” she says.

Grobler took up her position at News24 after Sapa closed on 31 March last year due to financial and operational reasons. While Grobler believes South Africa is poorer for it, Sapa’s closure proved to be bitter-sweet. It opened up opportunities for Grobler at News24 which she would not have had otherwise.

While Sapa was widely known within the industry for generating reliable, quick if somewhat colourless copy, at News24, they are able to explore the day-to-day human experience. Grobler says while the means of delivery has changed within journalism, the person on the street’s preference for news affecting their daily lives has not.

“We do a lot of stories on people who need help, and the response we get from our readers is amazing. For instance we did a story on a school in Bergville. It’s a poor community, and there were two matriculants who did really well, they got more than six distinctions each,” Grobler says. “They didn’t have any funding to go to varsity and we wrote the story and we hoped someone would come forward, and they did.”

That someone was a 71-year-old Durban resident, who met the boys and paid for their tuition at Stellenbosch University, where both boys are now studying.

“Literally, that is a story that is changing two people’s lives, probably two families' lives forever,” Grobler says. “You get readers sending emails saying they want to help, and they follow through. It takes some of the cynicism out of journalism when you see that.”

Asked what the best and worst aspects of her position were, Grobler pinpoints what in news journalism is arguably a truism.  

“A busy day is exhausting but fantastic. A quiet news day is depressing, because the reader numbers are low, and there is a lot of pressure on you to come up with something - but that is often when we find the great human interest stories.”

Connect with Grobler on Twitter.