Ita Buttrose

Ita Buttrose
Buttrose in June 2014
Born	(1942-01-17) 17 January 1942 (age 75) Potts Point, New South Wales, Australia
Occupation	Magazine editor, fashion journalist, media personality, ambassador
Title	Editor of The Australian Women's Weekly
Spouse(s)	Alasdair "Mac" Macdonald (m. 1963; div. 1976) Peter Sawyer (m. 1979; div. 1980)

Ita Clare Buttrose AO OBE (born 17 January 1942) is an Australian journalist, businesswoman, television personality and author. She was the founding editor of Cleo, a high-circulation magazine aimed at women aged 20 to 40 that was frank about sexuality (and, in its infancy, featured nude male centrefolds) and, later, as the editor of the more conventional Australian Women's Weekly. She is the youngest person ever to be appointed editor of the Weekly, which was then, per capita, the largest-selling magazine in the world.

Since 2013, Buttrose has been a panelist on the Network Ten morning program Studio 10.

Ita Buttrose was born at Potts Point, Sydney, and named after her maternal grandmother, Ita Clare Rodgers (née Rosenthal). She was raised as a Catholic by her parents. Buttrose's father, Charles Oswald, was a journalist and at one time the editor of the Daily Mirror in Sydney. By her own account she had decided on a career in journalism at the age of 11. Buttrose spent her first five years in New York City when her father was the New York correspondent for The Daily Mirror.

The family returned to Australia in 1949 and settled in the harbourside suburb of Vaucluse. Her parents divorced during her teens, after 25 years of marriage, and details of her father's private life were printed in the tabloid press, causing considerable anguish to her mother. Buttrose briefly attended a private school but because her father could not afford the fees she was then moved to a public school. She completed her secondary education at Dover Heights Home Science High School, leaving at 15 to begin her career. She started her career at Australian Consolidated Press, owned by the Packer family, working as a copy girl at the Australian Women's Weekly, then became a cadet journalist on The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph in Sydney. Her first byline came in 1959 when the 17-year-old covered the Australian tour by Princess Alexandra.