James McCausland was born in New York City where he worked in various news organisations and publications, specialising in finance. He worked at United Press International, the monthly Finance Magazine as senior editor and was in charge of all internal and external communications at the American Stock Exchange. He has been involved in the starting up of several publications including Good Weekend and the Sunday Age. He arrived in Australia from New York in 1971, and was a financial journalist and sub-editor for the Murdoch paper The Australian in the 1970s and night editor and business manager for The Age in the 1980s, before going into public relations.