Margaret Jones (journalist)
| Margaret Jones | |
|---|---|
| Born |
8 October 1923 Rockhampton, Queensland |
| Died | 30 July 2006 (aged 82) Bondi, New South Wales |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Occupation | Journalist |
Margaret Mary Jones (8 October 1923 – 30 July 2006) was an Australian journalist, noted for being one of the first accredited to China after the Cultural Revolution, and first female Foreign Editor on any Australian newspaper. Described as a 'trailblazer for women journalists', she wrote for John Fairfax Limited for a total of thirty-three years.
Jones was born in Rockhampton, Queensland the youngest of six children of John Jones, an employee of the Rockhampton Harbour Board for around 40 years. After a Catholic education in Rockhampton, she commenced teacher training in Brisbane, but abandoned it for life as a cadet journalist. There is an anecdote about her having a youthful article accepted by The Times (London).
She worked for the Australian Broadcasting Commission as a stringer then regional correspondent from 1948–53 during employment as a journalist on the Mackay Mercury, then moved to Sydney to work for the Daily Mirror.
She joined the Sydney Sun-Herald in 1954. Famously, her job application read in part "As you may see by my signature, I am a woman and I know that, even yet, a certain amount of prejudice still exists against women in journalism". Her first assignments were book and theatre reviews and a column "Dog of the Week".
She resigned in 1956 to work in England and Paris then rejoined the Sun-Herald in 1961.
She was posted to New York in 1965 as foreign correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald, the more serious broadsheet sister of the tabloid Sun-Herald to share offices with the rock music journalist Lillian Roxon. Their relationship, noted Robert Milliken in his autobiography, was "like two sopranos sharing the same stage". Perhaps to keep these two apart, she was posted to Washington in 1966, the SMH's first correspondent there, by editor John Pringle. There she was to experience overt professional sex discrimination from the National Press Club which did not admit woman members, effectively barring her from important presentations. Nevertheless, she made the most of her opportunities, reporting on President Lyndon B. Johnson and the escalation of the Vietnam War and the 1967 Glassboro Summit Conference between Johnson and Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin.
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