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On the Road in Indonesia with CNN's Paula Newton
courtesy of CNNThere is an old adage saying that if you love what you do, you will never have to work to make a living
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courtesy of CNN
There is an old adage saying that if you love what you do, you will never have to work to make a living.
Not many people have the privilege of doing what they love on a daily basis and earning a living out of it.
CNN international correspondent Paula Newton, with her deep passion for the world of journalism, is perhaps one of these few people who are lucky enough to spend their days working on something they passionately love.
Newton is currently working on a 30-minute CNN program called On the Road, which explores the cultures, customs and heritages of countries around the world.
In Newton's latest work for On the Road, she paid a visit to Indonesia and spent some time filming around the Jatiluwih rice terraces in Bali, exploring the Toraja highlands in Sulawesi and examining the coral reefs of the Gili Islands.
In Bali, Newton covered the story of how water has forms the core of Balinese spirituality. Here she took a journey to the mystical Pura Ulun Danu Bratan, the 'floating temple' on the shores of Lake Bratan, for her and her team to observe how holy water pervades throughout Balinese practices.
Newton's travels then continued to Toraja in Sulawesi where she delved into unique local rituals surrounding their perspective on life and death.
Finally, in the Gili Islands, Newton and her team took a look at the string of islands and how locals are fighting to carve out a model of sustainable tourism that balances with the island way.
Newton said that her experiences in Indonesia were fulfilling and fascinating. However, at the same time she said she also believed that she barely scratched the surface and felt that the country had so much more to offer in terms of stories to cover.
'I have to say I totally enjoyed my time in Indonesia. I wish I could spend more time there. I have been fascinated by the country,' she said.
Born in Montreal, Canada, in 1961, Newton found her passion in journalism during her teenage years.
'I confess to being a bit of a journalism geek. You know, I am the person who called the newspaper editor in my local town, which is Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, when I was 13 and asked what I needed to do to get a career in journalism. So, I was lucky that way I found a passion very early in life,' Newton told The Jakarta Post in a recent interview.
'I was lucky enough to be able to follow through on an educational term and experience terms and here I am.'
Newton's journalism career began in the 1980s, when she had a couple of short stints at various Canadian-based news agencies such as Independent Satellite News from 1986 to 1989, CHCH-TV from 1989 to 1991 and the Atlantic Television System from 1991 to 1993.
From 1993 to 2005, Newton built a solid career with Canadian news network CTV. Her high profile roles at CTV included being the Moscow bureau chief and the national affairs correspondent in Ottawa.
While at CTV, Newton also worked as the Atlantic affairs reporter in Halifax and the Quebec affairs correspondent in Montreal and occasionally anchored some of its flagship news shows.
After a solid career with CTV, Newton joined CNN in 2005.
Having the same career that has spanned nearly 30 years might take some steam out off a lot of people, but Newton said that even after a long career, she still had that same level of love and passion toward journalism.
'I absolutely love my job to this day,' she said.
'It is such a satisfying thing to be able to just talk to people about their lives or other stories or whatever is going on with them or whatever they are passionate about.'
Newton said that she felt, in a way, her privilege of getting important news stories and broadcasting them around the world had allowed her to become some sort of a voice for the voiceless and made an important impact on changing for the better any kind of situation in certain places.
'If you do it well, you can actually make a difference in people's understanding of the stories,' she said.
With her desire to make changes through stories, Newton has spent a major part of her career covering wars, conflicts and political affairs around the world.
Her career has combined coverage of the wars in the Middle East, Kosovo and the Balkans with political affairs reporting from the major G8, NATO and Commonwealth summits.
In recent years, Newton has not regularly covered conflicts and wars because she has her family to think about.
However, Newton said that she still often felt that sense of urgency for going back to covering conflicts whenever she heard breaking news about the places she had previously explored.
She also added that she still had this passion of covering more news about children's rights as the images of children suffering during her past coverage still haunted her to this very day.
'I think that sometimes we pay a lot of lip service to children's rights. It would be nice to do something more in depth,' she said.
'I think children, unfortunately, are really the primary victims in so many things that go on around the world.'
Currently, Newton said she really enjoyed reporting for a features program that covers customs and cultures from around the world, but it does not mean that she has lost interest in covering conflicts and wars, which could be said to have defined a major part of her career.
'I haven't switched. I just added to the repertoire,' she said.
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On the Road: Indonesia
It airs on Nov. 15 at 8:30 a.m., on Nov. 16 at 11:30 a.m., on Nov. 17 at 5:30 p.m. and on Nov. 18 at 12:30 p.m. and 4:40 p.m. Related links at can be found at edition.cnn.com/specials/world/on-the-road.
