Shana Alexander

Shana Alexander (October 6 1925 – June 23 2005)was an American journalist. Although she became the first woman staff writer and columnist for "Life" magazine, she was best known for her participation in the "Point-Counterpoint" debate segments of "60 Minutes" with conservative James J. Kilpatrick. She was a daughter of Tin Pan Alley composer Milton Ager and his wife, columnist Cecilia Ager.

Alexander graduated from Vassar College in 1945, majoring in anthropology. She fell into writing when she took a summer job as a copy clerk at the New York newspaper "PM", where her mother worked. She worked as a freelance writer for "Junior Bazaar" and "Mademoiselle" magazines before becoming a researcher at "Life" for $65 a week in 1951. During the 1960s she wrote "The Feminine Eye" column for "Life."

In 1962 she wrote an article for Life Magazine entitled “They Decide Who Lives, Who Dies: Medical miracle puts moral burden on small committee,” [Life 1962; 53: 102-25.] which sparked a national debate on the allocation of scarce dialysis machine resources.

Another Life magazine article, about a suicide hot line worker's efforts to keep a caller from killing herself, was turned into the 1965 film, "The Slender Thread", which starred Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft.

In 1969 she became the first female editor at "McCall's", but quit in 1971, complaining that it was a token job in a sexist environment. She was writing a column for "Newsweek" in 1975 when she replaced Nicholas von Hoffman on "60 Minutes", and debated Kilpatrick for the next four years. She played down this part of her career, commenting in 1979 that prior to that she "had been a writer, a columnist for "Life" magazine and for "Newsweek" -- that was about as high as you could get in column writing. I care about my writing. I'm not a quack-quack TV journalist." Still, the debates Alexander had with Kilpatrick were so prominent in American culture that they were famously satirized on "Saturday Night Live", with Jane Curtin taking Alexander's role on "Weekend Update" opposite Dan Aykroyd's version of Kilpatrick ("Jane, you ignorant slut.")

She also wrote a number of nonfiction books, including "Anyone's Daughter", a biography of kidnapped heiress Patricia Hearst. Her book "Nutcracker", about Frances Schreuder, the convicted socialite who persuaded her son to kill her millionaire father, was made into a 1987 TV miniseries. Schreuder was played by actress Lee Remick.

Shana Alexander died of cancer in Hermosa Beach, California, aged 79, on June 23 2005. [cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title= Shana Alexander, 79, Dies; Passionate Debater on TV |url= |quote= Shana Alexander, a journalist and television personality best known as the liberal sparring partner of the conservative commentator James J. Kilpatrick on the television newsmagazine "60 Minutes" in the 1970's, died on Thursday in Hermosa Beach, California.

She was 79 and had lived in Manhattan and Wainscott, New York, for many years. The cause was cancer, her family said. She had been in an assisted living facility. |publisher=New York Times |date=June 25, 2005 |accessdate=2007-07-21 ] []

She had been married and divorced twice. Her only daughter, Kathy, committed suicide in 1987. She was survived by a sister, Laurel Bentley, and a niece.

She had long been rumoured to have had an affair with the late Eugene McCarthy, but this was disputed by McCarthy's biographer, Dominic Sandbrook, in his 2005 book, "Eugene McCarthy and The Rise and Fall of American Liberalism". Fact|date=September 2007

Books

* "Anyone's Daughter"
* "" (1995), autobiography
* "Very Much a Lady" (Edgar Award, Best Fact Crime book, 1984)
* "Very Much a Lady: The Untold Story of Jean Harris and Dr. Herman Tarnower" (1983)
* "When She Was Bad"
* "Nutcracker"
* "The Astonishing Elephant" (2000)

References