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.

Kingston was born in Maryborough, Queensland and was raised in Mackay. After graduating from the University of Queensland with a degree in arts and law, she 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 that I'm not left wing, I'm a small-l liberal. A dying breed."