Frederick Charles Fripp

Frederick Charles "Charlie" Fripp is a South African journalist, photographer and entertainment writer.

He started writing as a professional journalist for a variety of small community newspapers in 2006, moving on to the position of professional photographer, which eventually led him to write entertainment pieces for one of South Africa's largest entertainment portals.

Early life

Born in 1981 in Cape Town, Fripp lived in the town of Melkbosstrand until he was AbOUT one year old. His father, a construction engineer, took over several building sites in the then-Transvaal, prompting his family to move to the coal-mining town of Witbank.

Here, Fripp attended Taalfees Primary School, where after he started his high school career at Hoër Tegniese Skool Witbank.

Post-high school

After graduating from Hoër Tegniese Skool Witbank in 1999 he decided to take up a summer job as a camp counselor in the United States Of America, serving as a General Counselor at Camp Wildwood in Florida in 2000 and Camp Tall Timbers in 2001.

Journalism career

Fripp enrolled in a public relations course in 2002, which he went on to complete and started with a journalism diploma the year after.

In 2006 he moved to Nelspruit in Mpumalanga to write motoring reviews for The Lowvelder. After seven months, he relocated back to Johannesburg, and took up a position as general journalist for The Fourways Review. At this newspaper two of his photographs came in contention for a Caxton Excellence Award (2007) in the category Best Feature Photograph.

While working at Caxton, he was assigned the position of chief photographer for Get It magazine, and in 2008 he re-entered the newsroom as a journalist for The Randburg Sun.

Developing a passion for entertainment writing, and with Caxton Newspapers in the middle of staff re-structuring, he took up a writing job for EntertainmentAfrica.com in September 2008, where he was mainly tasked with writing video gaming reviews as well as reviewing music albums and locally released films.

He is currently serving as video game reviewer and sub-editor for the South African online video game magazines Gamecca and Gladget.