Julia Baird

Julia Baird became a contributing opinion writer for The International New York Times in the fall of 2013. Ms. Baird is a journalist, broadcaster and author based in Sydney, Australia.

Until 2011, Ms. Baird worked at Newsweek magazine in the United States, as an editor and columnist. In 2005 she was a fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard, where she studied the export of American opinion to allied countries in the run-up to the 2003 war in Iraq.

Ms. Baird began her journalism career at The Sydney Morning Herald, where she became an education and political reporter, election editor, columnist and opinion editor. She was also a host of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s investigative radio program “Sunday Profile” and made radio documentaries on subjects including heavy metal music and convent education.  Her writing has appeared in a range of publications, including The Daily Beast, Harpers Bazaar, The Guardian, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Washington Post.

Ms. Baird holds a B.A. and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Sydney. She is the author of “Media Tarts: How the Australian Press Frames Female Politicians,” based on her doctoral dissertation, and is now at work on a biography of Queen Victoria. She is also a host of “The Drum,” an Australian TV news program. She lives by the beach with her two kids and swims whenever she can.