Kathleen O’Keefe at The Phnom Penh Post, Cambodia’s first independent newspaper, which she helped start in 1992.

Kathleen O’Keefe, a Newspaper Pioneer in Cambodia, Dies at 54

By SETH MYDANS / International New York Times | 10 December 2014

Kathleen O’Keefe, a founder of The Phnom Penh Post, Cambodia’s first independent newspaper, as the country began to emerge from decades of violence, died on Dec. 1 in Arlington, Mass. She was 54.

The cause was cancer, her husband, Jason Barber, said.

Founded in 1992, The Post, an English-language newspaper, introduced the concept of accurate, objective journalism to a country still in turmoil, and was a cornerstone of efforts to help Cambodia become a stable nation with international standards of governance.

It was often an uphill struggle as The Post challenged entrenched interests and the official government line. Cambodia was lurching from violence to corruption to official impunity in its halting recovery from four years of mass killings under the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s, followed by a continuing civil war.

Arriving in Cambodia from Thailand, where she had been working with refugees, Ms. O’Keefe and her husband at the time, Michael Hayes, put together a tiny staff with a tiny budget working in primitive conditions. 

“In the heady days of 1992, after we received permission to open a newspaper, Kathleen took charge of an endless number of tasks needed to get off the ground,” Mr. Hayes wrote in a tribute in The Post after she died.

Ms. O’Keefe’s accomplishments, he said, included “setting up a computer system; rewiring our building as power lines were all shot; installing a generator as blackouts were constant; training Cambodians how to use computers as they had never seen one before; sorting out the production and printing process; creating the necessary paperwork to sell ads and follow revenues; sorting out a distribution network; repairing broken computers by herself as nobody in town could do it; and getting telephone landlines,” a long and laborious process.

Former Cambodian staff members said she was a mentor, teaching them the fundamentals of independent journalism.

Ker Munthit, who joined the paper in its first year, went on to become a correspondent for The Associated Press, and now works for the United Nations Development Program, recalled her as much more than the co-founder of a newspaper.

“She helped plant the seeds for free speech and the freedom of the press that we all enjoy today,” he said in comments printed in The Post.

Ms. O’Keefe was born in Malden, Mass., on Feb. 8, 1960. She graduated from Harvard University in the early 1980s and afterward worked for a Boston technology company. She joined the Asia Foundation in San Francisco, then worked in Malaysia and Thailand to help process Vietnamese refugees for resettlement.

After leaving the newspaper in 2003, she remained in Cambodia, working for community groups and human rights organizations before leaving the country in 2009. Together with Mr. Barber, a former Post editor, she traveled in Africa, where she worked until a year ago on a child-protection project and trained radio station staff in Somaliland, according to The Post.

Besides her husband, she is survived by her father, Joe O’Keefe; her brothers, Michael and Mark; and a sister, Karen Chandler.