Paul Mason

Paul Mason is the Economics Editor of Newsnight. He was born in Greater Manchester and studied music and politics at Sheffield University, switching to journalism in the early 1990s. He joined the BBC in 2001, making his first live appearance on the day of 9/11. His groundbreaking reports on the rise of China as an economic power won him the Wincott Award in 2003. He has covered stories as diverse as Hurricane Katrina, gang violence on Merseyside and the social impact of mobile phones in Africa. He reported on the collapse of Lehman Brothers live from outside its New York HQ and "has hardly stopped for breath since then", reporting on the social and economic impact of the global meltdown from the mean streets of Gary, Indiana to the elite salons of Davos. He is the author of two books of non-fiction, Live Working or Die Fighting: How the working class went global and Meltdown: The end of the age of greed – and has twice been nominated for the Orwell Prize.