CNN's South African-based Correspondent to relocate to Atlanta

(Picture courtesy CNNFan)

CNN's excellent South African-based, and also South African in nationality, correspondent, Robyn Curnow, will be relocating from Johannesburg, where she had been the lead South African-based correspondent since 2008, to CNN Headquarters in Atlanta, where she will now be an anchor for the channel.

Curnow leaving the African news beat follows not too long after Nkepile Mabuse left CNN last year to return to eNCA where she started investigative magazine show, Checkpoint, and also Errol Barnett, who had been an African based correspondent and former host of Inside Africa, that also left covering African news to become an anchor for CNN in Atlanta.

Curnow has in the past provided excellent reporting on the region and played an important role in the channel's  coverage of events that has happened in the region including the passing of former presdient Nelson Mandela late last year and the Oscar Pistorius trial that is slowly drawing to a close. Whenever there is major news to cover in the region she would often appear extensively on both CNNi and CNNUS. (I personally felt that though her reporting was excellent, she always seem to paint the region in a more negative light than it really is)

Earlier this year in January Robyn was in Atlanta anchoring shows like CNN Newsroom on a temrorary basis and reviews of her anchoring skills were generally positive. It was not her first time anchoring, however, as she had been a full time London-based anchor for about a year for the channel, after which she left the channel before returning in 2008.

Her move to Atlanta follows not too long after CNN announced it was cutting all but one hour of its daily output from its CNN Hong Kong bureau, moving the cut news casts to Atlanta. It is now speculated that the slot Curnow is most likely to take up would be the current CNN Newsroom Live for Hong Kong slot, which currently airs at 12am SA time.

She does not move to Atlanta alone though. Her husband, Kim, who happens to be CNN's South African bureau chief will be leaving with her for Atlanta where he will take up a position at the news organisation's Foreign Desk. This then leads yet another, and extremely important, position in the region vacant.