Margo Kingston (born 1959) is an Australian journalist, author, and commentator. She is best known for her work at ''

The Sydney Morning Herald ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper ...

'' and her

weblog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

, Webdiary. Since 2012, Kingston has been a citizen journalist, reporting and commenting on Australian politics via Twitter and her own Web site.

Early life and education

Kingston was born in Maryborough, Queensland and was raised in

Mackay Mackay may refer to: *Clan Mackay, the Scottish clan from which the surname "MacKay" derives Mackay may also refer to: Places Australia * Mackay Region, a local government area ** Mackay, Queensland, a city in the above region *** Mackay Airpor ...

. She attended the

University of Queensland , mottoeng = By means of knowledge and hard work , established = , endowment = A$224.3 million , budget = A$2.1 billion , type = Public research university , chancellor = Peter Varghese , vice_chancellor = Deborah Terry , city = B ...

, graduating with a degree in arts and law. Her sister

Gay Alcorn Gay Alcorn is an Australian journalist and newspaper editor. She was appointed editor of ''The Age'' in September 2020. Her sister Margo Kingston is also a journalist. Career Alcorn studied arts and law at the University of Queensland. She began ...

is a journalist and newspaper editor.

Career

Kingston qualified as a solicitor and practised in

Brisbane Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Queensland, and the third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of approximately 2.6 million. Brisbane lies at the centre of the South ...

and later lectured in commercial law in Rockhampton, before becoming a journalist for ''

The Courier-Mail ''The Courier-Mail'' is an Australian newspaper published in Brisbane. Owned by News Corp Australia, it is published daily from Monday to Saturday in tabloid format. Its editorial offices are located at Bowen Hills, in Brisbane's inner northe ...

''. Within a year she moved to '' The Times on Sunday''. She also worked for ''

The Age ''The Age'' is a daily newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, that has been published since 1854. Owned and published by Nine Entertainment, ''The Age'' primarily serves Victoria, but copies also sell in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory ...

'', ''

The Canberra Times ''The Canberra Times'' is a daily newspaper in Canberra, Australia, which is published by Australian Community Media. It was founded in 1926, and has changed ownership and format several times. History ''The Canberra Times'' was launched in ...

'' and ''

A Current Affair ''A Current Affair'' may refer to: * ''A Current Affair'' (Australian TV program), 1971–present Australian current affairs program that airs on Nine Network * ''A Current Affair'' (American TV program), a 1986–1998 American television news ...

'' before moving to ''The Sydney Morning Herald'', where she worked until August 2005. Kingston gained prominence in 1998 when she led a sit-in of journalists at the federal election campaign launch of the

One Nation Party Pauline Hanson's One Nation (PHON or ONP), also known as One Nation or One Nation Party, is a right-wing populist political party in Australia. It is led by Pauline Hanson. One Nation had electoral success in the late 1990s, before suffer ...

in the Queensland town of Gatton. The group was protesting the party's treatment of the media during the campaign. Her experiences during this time are recorded in her book, ''Off The Rails: The Pauline Hanson Trip'', which won the 2000 Dobbie award for best first book by a female writer. In 2004, Margo wrote '' Not Happy, John'', launched in Sydney by

Tony Fitzgerald Gerald Edward "Tony" Fitzgerald (born 26 November 1941) is a former Australian judge, who presided over the Fitzgerald Inquiry. The report from the inquiry led to the resignation of the Premier of Queensland Joh Bjelke-Petersen, and the jai ...

QC. Kingston may be seen as part of the "larrikin/ratbag" Australian journalistic tradition which also encompasses

Alan Ramsey Alan Graham Ramsey (3 January 193824 November 2020) was an Australian journalist and columnist for ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' from 1986 to 2008. In a career spanning 56 years, he worked for ''The Daily Telegraph, The Australian, The Syd ...

and Stephen Mayne. This tradition is characterised by a willingness to break with convention, espouse controversial opinions and intervene in the events which the journalist is reporting. Kingston has been perceived by many, including her supporters, as openly left wing in her political views, however she describes her own position this way: "the irony sthat I'm not left wing, I'm a small-l liberal. A dying breed."

Webdiary

Margo Kingston also wrote Webdiary, which until 22 August 2005 was on the Sydney Morning Herald website. On this site Kingston recorded opinions on current events alongside contributors from the general public. Kingston terminated her contract with John Fairfax Holdings, publishers of ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' in August 2005. A new site was set up bearing the motto, "Independent, Ethical, Accountable and Transparent". Webdiary content is collected to form part of the Pandora Archive, Australia's Web Archive established initially by the

National Library of Australia The National Library of Australia (NLA), formerly the Commonwealth National Library and Commonwealth Parliament Library, is the largest reference library in Australia, responsible under the terms of the ''National Library Act 1960'' for "mainta ...

and now built in collaboration with nine other Australian libraries and cultural collecting organisations. The Pandora Archive collects and provides long-term access to selected online publications and web sites that are about Australia, are by an Australian author on a subject of social, political, cultural, religious, scientific or economic significance and relevance to Australia, or are by an Australian author of recognised authority and make a contribution to international knowledge. Webdiary's Charter states, in part, that its mission is "to help meet the unmet demand of some Australians for conversations on our present and our future, and to spark original thought and genuine engagement with important issues which effect us all, to link thinking Australians whoever they are and wherever they live and to insist that thinking Australians outside the political and economic establishment have the capacity to contribute to the national debate". Margo Kingston set an ethical standard for Webdiary based on the Code of Ethics of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, and also an Editorial Policy. The Editorial Policy states ''inter alia'': "If you think you've been unfairly edited, or that we've wrongly refused to publish your comments, please feel free to query our decision by posting a comment. This sometimes happens, and leads to an online discussion of the meaning and interpretation of the guidelines." Margo Kingston announced on 7 December 2005 that she would be leaving the site (and journalism) due to financial constraints. The site continued in existence without her input and is managed by Webdiary Pty Ltd, a private company established by volunteers who had helped Margo Kingston to establish and maintain the independent new site. Directors of Webdiary Pty Ltd and a group of volunteers kept the site alive after Margo Kingston had walked away from it. Margo Kingston related her view of the Webdiary story in a lecture to the South Australian Governor's Leadership Forum in February 2006. In June 2007, one of the four directors of Webdiary Pty Ltd resigned and the one volunteer still actively involved in comment moderation also quit for a time. Margo Kingston returned to Webdiary at that point in order to keep it alive. Many opinions featured in Webdiary made their way into Margo Kingston's 2004 book '' Not Happy, John'', which inspired the 'Not happy, John!' campaign, of which she was a founding member. Kingston was also a regular guest on ''

Late Night Live ''Late Night Live'' is a radio program broadcast by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio National and podcast and streamed over the World Wide Web. Since 1991, the program has been hosted by farmer, writer and public intellectual P ...

'', a nightly radio programme on the

Australian Broadcasting Corporation The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is the national broadcaster of Australia. It is principally funded by direct grants from the Australian Government and is administered by a government-appointed board. The ABC is a publicly-own ...

Radio National Radio National, known on-air as RN, is an Australia-wide public service broadcasting radio network run by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). From 1947 until 1985, the network was known as ABC Radio 2. History 1937: Predecessors a ...

network. On 3 August 2007, the publishing director of Penguin Australia, Bob Sessions, asked Margo Kingston to update ''Not Happy, John''. The update, titled '' Still Not Happy, John!'' was published by Penguin on 1 October 2007, and it was launched at an event held at

Manning Clark House The Manning Clark House, designed by Australian architect, Robin Boyd in 1952, is a house located at 11 Tasmania Circle, , a suburb of Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory. The house was built for Professor Manning Clark (1915 – 1991) ...

on 8 October 2007.

No Fibs

After community supported Webdiary closed in July 2012, Margo Kingston came out of retirement to co-publish No Fibs, a crowd funded

Citizen journalism Citizen journalism, also known as collaborative media, participatory journalism, democratic journalism, guerrilla journalism or street journalism, is based upon public citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, a ...

news source focusing on Australian politics, with former Webdiary colleague, Tony Yegles. Kingston credited Twitter with her re-emergence as a journalist, and No Fibs began to distribute its articles via its own website and Twitter. In early 2013 an ebook of '' Still Not Happy, John!'' was published by Penguin. In May 2013 No Fibs launched a citizen journalism project in partnership with Macquarie University to report the 2013 Australian federal election. A national call for voluntary citizen journalists was distributed on Twitter resulting in reports from all states and territories except the Northern Territory. No Fibs published reports by a cluster of citizen journalists resident in the Victorian

Division of Indi The Division of Indi (pronounced ) is an Australian electoral division in the state of Victoria. The division is located in the north-east of the state, adjoining the border with New South Wales. The largest settlements in the division are th ...

where, after a lengthy preference count, Independent candidate Cathy McGowan was elected over long-term Liberal incumbent,

Sophie Mirabella Sophie Mirabella (née Panopoulos; born 27 October 1968) is an Australian lawyer and former politician who currently serves as a Commissioner on the Fair Work Commission since 24 May 2021. She was previously a Liberal Party member of the Austra ...

. During the election campaign, Kingston created a Twitter hashtag, #IndiVotes, to distribute No Fibs' reports and focus widespread social and mainstream media interest on the election outcome in Indi.

References

External links