Freelance journalist Dan McDougall has bagged a foreign correspondent post at the Sunday Times just weeks after being named foreign reporter of the year at the British Press Awards.
McDougall was a doubly unusual winner of the prize. Not only is he a freelance but he was honoured for work published in three very different titles: The Observer, News of the World and the Mail on Sunday Live Magazine.
The judges said of his work: “Here is a reporter comfortable in all parts of the world who produces world exclusive stories with writing to match – interesting and entertaining while at the same time brilliantly researched and sourced. A great range of reporting for very different markets.”
McDougall is to be the Sunday Times’s new Africa correspondent, based in Cape Town. He will write for the news section of the paper as well as filing reportage and investigations for the Sunday Times Magazine.
In other changes at the Sunday Times, Christina Lamb is to take over as US editor when the current holder of the job, Sarah Baxter, returns to take over from Robin Morgan as editor of the Sunday Times Magazine.
McDougall, 36, previously worked as The Observer’s New-Delhi based South Asia Correspondent and has reported from over 50 countries including Afghanistan, the Palestinian Territories, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lebanon and Pakistan. He is to take up his new post in the summer.
While he will be under contract to the Sunday Times – he will continue to write for other publications.
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