Margo Kingston
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Margo Kingston (born 1959) is an Australian political journalist who currently works for The Sydney Morning Herald.
Kingston was born in Maryborough, Queensland and grew up in Mackay. After graduating from the University of Queensland with a degree in arts and law, she practised as a solicitor in Brisbane and lectured in commercial law in Rockhampton before becoming a journalist for The Courier-Mail, Brisbane's only daily newspaper. Within a year she moved to The Times on Sunday (now closed) and has since worked for The Age, The Canberra Times and A Current Affair, a nightly current events programme on the Nine Network.
Kingston achieved prominence in 1998 when she led a sit-in of journalists at the federal election campaign launch of the One Nation Party in the Queensland town of Gatton - the journalists were unhappy with the party's treatment of the media during the campaign. Her experiences during this election campaign are recorded in her book, Off The Rails: The Pauline Hanson Trip.
Though Kingston is openly left-of-centre in her political leanings, she is generally respected by all sides of politics for her political journalism. She currently confines herself primarily to opinion pieces in The Sydney Morning Herald though she occasionally writes news reports on Australian politics. She also writes Webdiary on the Herald website in which she and contributors from the general public record their opinions on current events. She incorporated many opinions featured in Webdiary into her 2004 book Not Happy, John, which inspired the 'Not happy John!' campaign, of which she is a founding member. Kingston is also a regular guest on Late Night Live, a nightly radio programme on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio National network.
Further reading
- Kingston, Margo. Not Happy, John! defending Australia's democracy. Paperback, 240 pages. Published June 2004 by Penguin. ISBN 0143002589.
External links
- The Sydney Morning Herald website (http://www.smh.com.au)
- Radio National website (http://www.abc.net.au/rn)