PUBLIC LECTURE: From Barons to Bloggers

Margo Kingston, a longterm political journalist and latterly (since 2000) editor and publisher of the Sydney Morning Herald's online Webdiary, has recently departed Fairfax and mainstream media to establish Webdiary as an independent outlet, a vehicle for her ideas of the citizen as journalist (see www.webdiary.com.au)

She has also recently contributed to a book, The Alfred Deakin Debate: Barons to Bloggers. Confronting Media Power ( Series Editor Jonathan Mills, Melbourne University Publishing).

In this talk, she will elaborate further her ideas about the media in Australia today and in the future, and how online technologies and 'communities' may be influencing the shape of these futures.

Margo will be introduced by the Hon Judi Moylan MP, Member for Pearce.

Profile: Margo Kingston is an Australian political journalist who formerly worked for The Sydney Morning Herald. 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, now Brisbane's only daily newspaper. Within a year she moved to The Times on Sunday (a now-defunct national newspaper) and has since worked for The Age, The Canberra Times and A Current Affair.

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.

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.

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