Post Axes Gossip Queen After 33 Years

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(Feb. 25) -- Anyone in the entertainment media or gossip world knows the name Liz Smith, the well-connected New York Post columnist who seemed to always have one step ahead on the New York scene, even at age 86. Now, she's become the latest casualty of the recession and the ailing newspaper business, as Smith was let go by the Post after 33 years of service.

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Liz Smith, the legendary gossip columnist for the New York Post, has been let go after 33 years of service to the paper. She claims it "due to economiccircumstances."

"I'm very sorry that that has come to an end, and that Iwasn't valuable enough for them to keep me on," the 86-year-oldSmith said Tuesday.

Smith said the daily newspaper declined to renew her $125,000annual contract in a letter that said, "due to economiccircumstances, they were the bearer of bad news and so forth."

Col Allan, the paper's editor-in-chief, said: "The Post isgrateful to have been able to publish Liz Smith's legendary columnfor so many years. We wish her the very best for the future."

Smith writes a syndicated newspaper column that she said iscarried by 70 papers around the country. She also publishes inDaily Variety and in Parade magazine, and is part owner of a Website. Smith says she's also writing a novel and will never retire.

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"I'm busy," she said. "I'm OK. I'm OK for a person who's beenlet go."

In New York, her column had appeared in Newsday until she leftin a contract dispute in 2005. The Post had run her column six daysa week, and cut it back to three days a year ago to cut costs,despite Smith's unsuccessful appeal to Rupert Murdoch.

Her last column in the Post will appear on Thursday. She'salready written it.

"I just wrote the usual stuff," she said, "and then I saidgoodbye."

2009-02-25 06:52:58

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