Margaret Simons

Margaret Simons (born 1960) is an Australian academic, freelance journalist and author. She has written numerous articles and essays as well as many books, including a biography of Senate leader of the Australian Labor Party, Penny Wong and Australian minister for the environment Tanya Plibersek. Her essay Fallen Angels won the Walkley Award for Social Equity Journalism.

She is an Honorary Fellow at the Centre for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne.

Early life and education Simons was born in the UK in 1960.

Simons has a doctorate in creative arts from the University of Technology, Sydney.

Career In 2010, Simons co-founded, with Melissa Sweet, the community-funded news site YouComm News, run by the Public Interest Journalism Foundation based at Swinburne University of Technology. At this time, she was a research fellow at the Institute of Social Research at Swinburne, and also a Senior Associate of RMIT University. and has been a regular media commentator in The Guardian. She has also written for The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, Griffith Review, and The Monthly. and coordinator of the Master of Journalism degree at the University of Melbourne from 2012 to 2017, between 2017 and 2019.

From 2018 to 2021, Simons was a Director and Chair of Research at the Public Interest Journalism Initiative.

, Simons is an Honorary Fellow at the Centre for Advancing Journalism at Melbourne University.

Her biography of Penny Wong, Senate leader of the Australian Labor Party, was longlisted for the 2020 Walkley Book Award.

Selected works

The Truth Teller (1996) Wheelbarrows, Chooks & Children: a gardener's life (1999) Fit to Print: inside the Canberra Press Gallery (1999) The Meeting of the Waters: the Hindmarsh Island affair (2003) Latham's World: the new politics of the outsiders (2004) The Rich and Fertile Story of Compost: resurrection in a bucket (2004) The Content Makers: understanding the media in Australia (2007) Faith, Money & Power: what the religious revival means for politics (2007) Malcolm Fraser: the political memoirs (with Malcolm Fraser) (2010)

Duty of Care, August 2010, The Monthly Journalism at the Crossroads: crisis and opportunity for the press (2012) Kerry Stokes: self made man (2013) Six Square Metres: reflections from a small garden (2015) Fallen Angels, July 2015, The Monthly The Long Letter to a Short Love, or..., Summer 2015, Meanjin Right Wing Refugee, January 2016, SBS Lost Boy Found, June 2016, SBS Is Michelle Guthrie Tuned in to the ABC?, September 2016, The Monthly Penny Wong: passion and principle (2019) Cry Me a River: The Tragedy of the Murray-Darling Basin, March 2020, Quarterly Essay Tanya Plibersek: On Her Own Terms (2023)