Margaret Simons

Margaret Simons (b. 1960), journalist and author, has joined the Journalism department in Monash University’s School of Media, Film, and Journalism. Prior to this, she was the Director of the Centre for Advanced Journalism – a position she held since 2011 – and coordinator of the new Masters in Journalism at the University of Melbourne. Simons spent nearly ten years on staff at the Age. She worked as an arts reporter, feature writer, consumer affairs roundsperson, as a specialist in Freedom of Information legislation and as an investigative journalist. From 1986 to 1989, during the years of the Fitzgerald Inquiry into police and political corruption, she was the newspaper’s Brisbane correspondent. At the conclusion of the inquiry’s public hearings, she took leave from the Age to join Mr Tony Fitzgerald QC’s staff to assist in the writing of his final report. She writes on media for Crikey, and has published over a dozen books since 1993.

In 2015, Simons and Tacon travelled to the Philippines to report and photograph ‘Fallen Angels,’ which won the Walkley Award for Excellence in Journalism in the category of social equity journalism. This photograph was taken four years prior, when Tacon was named freelance journalist of the year at the Walkley Awards in 2012.