Margaret is an award-winning freelance journalist, author and journalism academic. She is well known as a writer and thinker on the future of journalism.

Margaret was a founding director of the Public Interest Journalism Initiative (2018-2021) and served as the inaugural Chair of Research (2018-2021). She is currently an Honorary Fellow at the the Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne, where she previously served as director and the coordinator of the Master of Journalism degree (2012-2017). From 2017-2019 she was an Associate Professor of Journalism at Monash University.

Margaret has won one Walkley Award, two Quill awards and has published 13 books.

Her most recent work includes a Quarterly Essay Cry me a river – the tragedy of the Murray Darling Basin, published in March 2020. Her book Penny Wong – Passion and Principle was published in 2019.

Earlier work includes a biography of Kerry Stokes, published in November 2013; Journalism at the Crossroads (Scribe 2011) and Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs co-written with the former prime minister (The Miegunyah Press 2010). The latter book won Book of the Year and the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards in 2011.

Margaret was the founding chair, and remains a board member of, the Public Interest Journalism Foundation, which was established in 2009 at the Swinburne Institute of Social Research to promote and enable innovation in public interest journalism.

Margaret holds a Doctorate in Creative Arts from the University of Technology Sydney.