[1] In 1999, she was the recipient of a journalism fellowship in Asian studies, at the University of Hawaii, and was a 2009 Nieman Global Health fellow at Harvard.
[1] At age 19, Mason, still a student at West Virginia University, worked for The Dominion Post, as a typist and eventually reporting as an intern.
[3] In 2004 she reported from Indonesia on the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, she also covered the bird flu, SARS, H1N1, and other disease outbreaks.
[9][10] A major milestone in Masons career was her work with other reporters on the staff of the Associated Press on the Pulitzer prize-winning series of stories about slave-labor in Thailand's fishing industry.
Following the reporting, the U.S. State Department began their own investigation and new legislation was passed to help close loopholes that allowed sales of products produced with slave labor.