Ita Buttrose Biography
Ita Buttrose is an Australian journalist, author, and National Ambassador of Dementia Australia. She was appointed the Chairperson of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in February 2019 and her term will expire in March 2024. However, she recently announced she will not seek a second term as ABC chair.
Ita 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 centerfolds) and, later, the editor of the more conventional The Australian Women’s Weekly. She was also the youngest person to be appointed editor of The Weekly, which was then, per capita, the largest-selling magazine in the world.
Ita Buttrose Age
Buttrose is 81 years old as of 2023. She was born on January 17, 1942, in Potts Point, Australia.
Ita Buttrose Height
She is around 5 feet 6 inches tall.
Ita Buttrose Nationality
She is Australian by nationality.
Ita Buttrose Education
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. On leaving school at 15 years old, she served as a cadet journalist at Australian Consolidated Press, starting as a copygirl for the Australian Women’s Weekly.
Ita Buttrose Parents
Ita is the daughter of Mary Clare and Charles Oswald Buttrose. She was born in Potts Point, Sydney, and named after her maternal grandmother, Ita Clare Rodgers (née Rosenthal), pronounced /ˈaɪtə/ (rhyming with ‘fighter’). She was raised as a Catholic by her parents.
Her father, Charles Oswald Buttrose, was a journalist and at one time the editor of The Daily Mirror in Sydney. Ita spent her first five years in New York City when her father was the New York correspondent for The Daily Mirror. She has Jewish ancestry on her maternal side.
The family returned to Australia in 1949 and settled in the harbourside suburb of Vaucluse. However, 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.
Ita has three brothers: Jules, Will, and Charles. She cared for her father after he was diagnosed with vascular dementia before he died in 1999.
Ita Buttrose Husband
Ita first got married to architect Alasdair Macdonald at the age of 21. She met her husband Alasdair – aka ‘Mac’ – when she was 18. Her brother Jules organized with her mum for Alasdair to have the downstairs area while he was studying architecture at the university.
“It was a friendship to begin with and then he asked me out to Alouette, a trendy French restaurant,” Ita said.
“I got out of the car afterward and, I said, ‘Well, I must go’, and he said, ‘Oh, I was just about to kiss you’. So I got back in again and said, ‘Why don’t you?’. And that was it. Click. We’d fallen in love.”
Ita and Alasdair got married when Alasdair was still finishing his degree. During an interview when asked why she continued working even after getting married and having children despite women getting married, having children, and rarely going back to work back then. She said: “I just wanted to stay working. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Also, when Mac and I got married he was still finishing his degree. We needed the money. Then I got pregnant and I kept on working.”
The couple traveled and worked abroad before Ita returned to become women’s editor of The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, then also owned by Sir Frank Packer. They had two children, Kate and Ben before they separated in 1976.
In 1979, Ita married Peter Sawyer but they divorced in 1980.
Ita Buttrose ABC
Buttrose is the most celebrated female journalist in Australian history. She is the only one to be awarded this country’s highest honor – Australian of the Year. Equally impressive – some would say more so – is the fact she is the only journalist to have a rock band (Cold Chisel) name a song after her. She has blazed a trail from newspapers to magazines to television. She’s written books, and speeches, launched eponymous products, and received every award imaginable. Success and Ita are synonymous.
Ask anyone who they think of when they hear the name Ita and they think only of Ita Clare Buttrose. Born in Potts Point, Sydney in 1942, Buttrose says she caught the journalism bug at the age of 11. Her father, Charles Oswald, was also a journalist whose career included a stint as editor of Sydney’s Daily Mirror from 1951-54.
At only 15, Buttrose left Dover Heights Home Science High School having secured a job as a copygirl at the Packer family’s flagship magazine The Australian Women’s Weekly. It was the magazine she would go on to edit (1975-1980) and which would make her a publishing icon by her thirties.
Like many journalists, she had plenty of twists in her career. Buttrose moved from Australian Consolidated Press to The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph women’s pages as a cadet and achieved her first by-line by the age of 17. At 21, she married architect Alasdair Macdonald and the couple travelled and worked abroad before Buttrose returned to become women’s editor on The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, then also owned by Sir Frank Packer.
If there is a recurring theme in Buttrose’s celebrated journalistic career it is sex: the reporting of it, the feminization of it, and everything in between. The immaculately groomed Ita was an equal parts sex symbol and sex expert. In 2011 at 69, the legend of Ita was introduced to a new generation of Australians with the broadcast of the two-part television miniseries Paper Giants. She was played by Asher Keddie, who won accolades for the portrayal, including her perfect Ita lisp. The hit ABC series told the story of Cleo magazine, the sexually progressive magazine for smart young women. In a riotous celebration of 70s fashion, it told the tale of how 30-year-old Ita was backed by 35-year-old Kerry Packer, a young businessman living in the shadow of his father.
Cleo was launched in 1972, a time when the country was experiencing rapid change under Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. The magazine was an instant success with 105,000 copies sold in two days – a sellout. There were articles on sex toys, fantasies, and orgasms, lesbianism, and contraception.
“We wrote about sex as if we had discovered it,” Buttrose recalled. Cleo was also the first Australian women’s magazine to feature nude male centerfolds, with the ruggedly handsome Jack Thomson appearing in the first issue.
The success of Cleo earned Buttrose the dream job of editor of The Australian Women’s Weekly and she was soon elevated to editor-in-chief of both publications, a role she held from 1976 to 1978 when she was again promoted by Kerry Packer to publisher of the women’s division.
In 1981, Buttrose left ACP to join Rupert Murdoch as editor-in-chief of the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph – the first woman to edit a metropolitan daily newspaper. She was later appointed to the board of News Limited.
In the mid-1980s eighties, when the AIDs epidemic struck and a terrible fear gripped the nation, Buttrose stepped out of publishing and became the public face of sex education. It was a brave stand and one that won her a legion of fans in the gay and lesbian community.
After leaving News Limited, she formed a publishing company and in 1981, with money from an anonymous backer, published ITA, a decade or so before Oprah Winfrey’s O magazine. Buttrose has written or co-produced nine books including A Passionate Life and a Guide to Australian Etiquette. After years of trailblazing in the publishing industry, she largely dedicated her life to public service.
Her numerous voluntary posts have included chairing the National Breast Cancer Centre’s Advisory Network, serving as director of the Prostate Cancer Foundation, and, in 2011, the National President of Alzheimer’s Australia.
Buttrose has been recognized with an AO for her services to the community, an OBE for her service to journalism, and a Centenary Medal for business leadership. In 2011, she appeared on the September cover of The Australian Women’s Weekly 36 years after she first edited it. In the cover story, she gave a small insight into the thinking that framed her extraordinary success.
Currently, she is the Chairperson of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. She was appointed the chair of the ABC in February 2019, which means her term will expire in March 2024. However, Buttrose announced she will not seek a second term as ABC chair.
Ita Buttrose Salary
Buttrose earns an annual salary of $211,297 as ABC’s Chair.
Ita Buttrose Net Worth
She has an estimated net worth of $82 million as of 2023.
