Birkhead launched her career as a journalist when, as a passenger on the RMS Carpathia, the ship came to the sinking Titanic's rescue in 1912.

[5] Her father was a dentist, and her mother came from a family with long Missouri roots.

[6] Birkhead's amateur reporting on the Titanic disaster so impressed James Gordon Bennett, Jr - owner of the New York Herald and the Paris Herald - that when she arrived in Paris in 1912 he immediately offered her a job as society columnist for the paper.

[3] She reported on the activities of Americans not just in Paris, but in the French Riviera and other popular destinations for Anglophone residents and visitors across Europe.

When World War I began, Birkhead began covering the activities of General Pershing, her fellow Missourian, for the paper, as well as becoming one of the few female reporters to visit battlefields (albeit after the armistice).