Ita Buttrose

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 to ever 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.

Early life

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.