Margaret Simons


Margaret Simons is an Australian academic, journalist and author. Her essay Fallen Angels won the Walkley Award for Social Equity Journalism. She has written thirteen books, including co-authoring the memoirs of Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser.
Until 2017 she was director of the Centre for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne. She is currently an Associate Professor of journalism at Monash University.

Career

Simons was a finalist for a Walkley Award for journalism in 2007 for the story Buried in the Labyrinth, about the release of a pedophile into the community, published in Griffith Review and her book The Content Makers – Understanding the Future of the Australian Media was longlisted for the 2008 non-fiction book Walkley Award.
She was previously the media reporter for Crikey and is a regular media commentator in The Guardian. For many years, she wrote the "Earthmother" gardening column for The Australian.
In 2011 Simons she was appointed as director of the Centre for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne.
In 2015 she won the Walkley Award for Social Equity Journalism for her essay Fallen Angels, published in The Monthly. The essay is an investigation of sex tourism in the Philippines and the children that have been abandoned there by their Australian fathers. The award was shared with photographer Dave Tacon.
In 2017 she moved to the School of Film, Media and Journalism at Monash University.
Simons has a doctorate from the University of Technology, Sydney and was co-founder, with Melissa Sweet, of the community-funded news site YouComm News. She lives in Melbourne.

Articles