Paul Mason

Paul Mason is Newsnight's Economics Editor.

He joined the programme in 2001 as business and industry correspondent, a role which broadened to include covering gun crime in Croxteth, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the papal accession race from the slums of Lagos, Nigeria.

He took over as Economics Editor in 2008 with a brief to cover an agenda that he sums up as: "profit, people and planet".

Before joining Newsnight, Paul was deputy editor of Computer Weekly, a campaigning magazine whose investigative team regularly creates waves across government and industry.

He spent a total of nine years covering business in specialist magazines and newspapers before making the move into TV.

Prior to becoming a journalist Paul was a professional musician and lectured at Loughborough University of Technology.

He was born in 1960 in Leigh, Greater Manchester. He was educated at Thornleigh Salesian College, Sheffield University and London University.

Paul won the 2003 Wincott Award for business journalism for reports from China covering the economic and political transition there; was named Workworld Business Journalist of the Year in 2004 and won the Diageo African Business Reporting Award 2007 for his acclaimed film on how mobile phones are changing Africa.

Beyond Newsnight Paul has authored a book on the history of the global labour movement and the Radio Four series "Spinning Yarns", a highly personal account of the history of the cotton industry in his home region of Lancashire.

Paul's blog for Newsnight is called "Idle Scrawl", and has recently adopted the Chinese co-title "Xian Ren San Ji" in acknowledgement of its growing audience in China. Read it here