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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.
Her sister Gay Alcorn is a journalist and newspaper editor. [1]
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." [2]
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 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". [3]
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." [4]
Margo Kingston announced on 7 December 2005 that she would be leaving the site (and journalism) due to financial constraints. [5] 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. [6] 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. [7]
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 , a nightly radio programme on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio National 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 on 8 October 2007. [8]
After community supported Webdiary closed in July 2012, Margo Kingston came out of retirement to co-publish No Fibs, a crowd funded Citizen journalism 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. [9]
In May 2013 No Fibs launched a citizen journalism project in partnership with Macquarie University to report the 2013 Australian federal election. [10] A national call for voluntary citizen journalists was distributed on Twitter [11] 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 where, after a lengthy preference count, Independent candidate Cathy McGowan was elected over long-term Liberal incumbent, Sophie Mirabella. 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. [12]
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, analyzing, and disseminating news and information." Similarly, Courtney C. Radsch defines citizen journalism "as an alternative and activist form of news gathering and reporting that functions outside mainstream media institutions, often as a response to shortcomings in the professional journalistic field, that uses similar journalistic practices but is driven by different objectives and ideals and relies on alternative sources of legitimacy than traditional or mainstream journalism". Jay Rosen offers a simpler definition: "When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another." The underlying principle of citizen journalism is that ordinary people, not professional journalists, can be the main creators and distributors of news. Citizen journalism should not be confused with community journalism or civic journalism, both of which are practiced by professional journalists; collaborative journalism, which is the practice of professional and non-professional journalists working together; and social journalism, which denotes a digital publication with a hybrid of professional and non-professional journalism.
Sophie Mirabella 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 Australian House of Representatives from 2001 to 2013, representing the Division of Indi, Victoria.
The 'Not happy, John!' campaign was an Australian political campaign to oppose the re-election of Prime Minister John Howard as member for Bennelong in the 2004 Australian federal election. The title of the campaign is based on the popular television commercial, Not happy, Jan! and the book Not Happy, John by Margo Kingston.
Indira Naidoo is an Australian author, journalist and television and radio presenter.
Jessica June Rowe is an Australian journalist, author and television presenter. She was the co-host of Studio 10 on Network Ten until March 2018, and is Member of the Order of Australia for her mental health advocacy.
Antony Loewenstein is an Australian German freelance investigative journalist, author and film-maker.
Sally Jane Sara AM, is an Australian journalist and TV presenter.
Nidhi Razdan is an Indian journalist and television personality. She was the executive editor of NDTV and the primary anchor of NDTV 24x7 news debate show Left, Right & Centre, and the weekly debate show The Big Fight.
Fairfax Media was a media company in Australia and New Zealand, with investments in newspaper, magazines, radio and digital properties. The company was founded by John Fairfax as John Fairfax and Sons, who purchased The Sydney Morning Herald in 1841. The Fairfax family retained control of the business until late in the 20th century.
Leigh Peta Sales is an Australian journalist and author. She is the host of the Australian television channel ABC's news and current affairs program 7.30. In 2019, she was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for her services to broadcast journalism.
Not Happy, John is a book written by Margo Kingston, an Australian journalist and political commentator. It outlines why she is not happy with then Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, and his policies for Australia. Many opinions published on Margo Kingston's Webdiary made their way into the book. The book inspired the 'Not happy, John!' campaign to oppose the re-election of John Howard as member for Bennelong in the 2004 Australian federal election.
Lisa Joy Millar is an Australian television news presenter and journalist.
Julie Posetti is an internationally published Australian journalist and academic. In 2018 she was appointed Senior Research Fellow with the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford (UK). There, she leads RISJ's new Journalism Innovation Project. Posetti is the author of UNESCO's landmark global study 'Protecting Journalism Sources in the Digital Age' (2017) which examines the erosion of journalistic source protection conventions essential to investigative journalism in the context of national security overreach, and widening surveillance nets. She has won multiple professional awards, and journalism education and research honours. Based in Paris in 2013 and 2014 as a Research Fellow and Editor with the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) and the World Editors Forum, she edited the flagship publications Trends in Newsrooms 2014 and Trends in Newsrooms 2015 In 2010, she was targeted by the right wing Murdoch newspaper 'The Australian' and threatened with legal action, after reporting, via Twitter, critical comments made by one of the newspaper's former reporters during a journalism conference in Sydney. This episode became known as "Twitdef"
John Englart, pseudonym Takver, is an Australian citizen journalist, photojournalist, Videographer and blogger from Melbourne.
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Ian McPhedran is an Australian author and retired journalist. Having begun his journalism career at The Canberra Times, from 1998 he worked as a defence writer for the News Corp Australia mastheads, including the Herald Sun, The Daily Telegraph and Northern Territory News, before announcing his retirement in January 2016. HarperCollins has published eight books by McPhedran, who won a Walkley Award in 1999.
Jo Chandler is an Australian journalist, science writer and educator. Her journalism has covered a wide range of subject areas, including science, the environment, women's and children's issues, and included assignments in Africa, the Australian outback, Antarctica, Afghanistan and Papua New Guinea. She is currently a lecturer at the University of Melbourne's Centre for Advancing Journalism and Honorary Fellow Deakin University in Victoria, Australia.
The Voices for or Voices of groups are a series of loosely related political community engagement groups in Australia. Some of the groups have endorsed candidates to run as candidates in federal elections. The independence of the groups has been disputed, with significant funding being received from the Climate 200 fund backed by energy investor Simon Holmes à Court.
Zoe Daniel is an Australian journalist, politician, columnist and broadcaster. She is the independent member of parliament for the Division of Goldstein following the 2022 Australian federal election, having defeated the incumbent Liberal Party member Tim Wilson.
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