Champika Liyanaarachchi

Who is Champika Liyanaarachchi?

The First woman to be the editor of a daily Newspaper in Sri Lanka, Champika Liyanaarachchi is the Chief Editor of Sri Lanka’s largest selling independent English daily, the Daily Mirror.

She took over duties as the Chief Editor, Daily Mirror in January 2007 thus becoming the youngest editor ever to head a national newspaper. Liyanaarachchi holds a Master’s Degree’ Degree in Conflict Resolution from University of Colombo and is currently reading for her M Phil/ Ph D at University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka. She read for a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature from University of Sri Jayewardenapura. The University of Sri Jayewardenapura offered her a youth fellowship after she became the student to get the highest marks for English Literature in the first year. This fellowship, granted to the university by the Japanese government, saw her travelling to South Africa, Tanzania, UAE and Japan within a span of three months. She was the President of the English Literary Association of the university and joined the Mirror editorial while still being a second year student.

Liyanaarachchi was appointed the chief editor of Daily Mirror in January 2007 and under her the Daily Mirror became the first ever newspaper to break news on web dailymirror.lk as well as on iPad. Besides, in 2009 she started Mirror’s Tamil news website tamilmirror.lk, of which she remains the Editor in Chief, and also the Daily Mirror mobile breaking news service with two mobile phone operators. In addition to this the Daily Mirror also runs the sports website mirrorsports.lk which too comes under her purview.