Former Star reporter returns to cover Arctic beat

Paul Watson, who became Canada’s only Pultizer-prize winning journalist in 1994 while working for the Toronto Star, has returned to the Star to cover the Arctic.

Watson was covering the civil war in Somalia in 1994 when he won the Pulitzer for spot news photography. He went on to become the South Asia bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times and author Where War Lives, a book about covering conflict.

According to the announcement of Watson’s return attached to his first column in the Star, the reporter will become “the world’s first multimedia journalist covering the planet’s new frontier, the Arctic…”

The Star explains in a sidebar:

“Paul Watson will tell the unfolding story of the Arctic through the lives of Canadian and other pioneers. ‘The cast of colourful characters inhabiting a vast land that will help shape the Canadian spirit and identity in the 21st century are too interesting, too important to be left to occasional visits,’ he says. By covering the new frontier as a region, fraught with dangers that arise from competition but rich with possibilities of cooperation, the Star leads the way on one of the most intriguing stories of our time.”