Margo Kingston

Margo Kingston (born 1959) is an Australian journalist, author, and commentator. She is best known for her work at The Sydney Morning Herald and her weblog, Webdiary. Since 2012, Kingston has been a citizen journalist, reporting and commenting on Australian politics via Twitter and her own Web site.

Kingston was born in Maryborough, Queensland and was raised in Mackay. She attended the University of Queensland, graduating with a degree in arts and law.

Kingston qualified as a solicitor and practised in Brisbane and later lectured in commercial law in Rockhampton, before becoming a journalist for The Courier-Mail. Within a year she moved to The Times on Sunday. She also worked for The Age, The Canberra Times and A Current Affair 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 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 QC.

Kingston may be seen as part of the "larrikin/ratbag" Australian journalistic tradition which also encompasses Alan Ramsey 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 [is] that I'm not left wing, I'm a small-l liberal. A dying breed."

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