[Deathwatch] Frances Lewine, journalist, 86

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

Frances Lewine, trailblazing journalist, dies
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/20/obit.lewine/index.html

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Frances Lewine, who covered the White House for the
Associated Press during six presidential administrations and spent
nearly three decades as a CNN editor and producer, died Saturday of an
apparent stroke. She was 86.

 Lewine was regarded as a trailblazer who battled for women's rights in
journalism, fighting to open the National Press Club and the Gridiron
Club -- a Washington journalists' organization -- to women.

"It's amazing that at her age, Fran was still staking out
administration and elected officials after weekend talk shows," CNN
Washington Bureau Chief David Bohrman said. "All of journalism has lost
a true pioneer."

Lewine was assigned to the White House in 1956 to cover the activities
of first ladies and the Washington social scene, but in 1965 became the
AP's first full-time female White House correspondent.

In 1977, she left AP to join the administration of President Jimmy
Carter, and became the Department of Transportation's deputy director
of public affairs. When Carter left office in 1981, Lewine moved to the
newly created Cable News Network -- at age 60 -- as an assignment
editor and field producer.

"When President Reagan was shot, I walked over to CNN that day and
asked to help," Lewine said in a 2005 article in a newsletter for Time
Warner, the parent company of CNN. "My claim to fame was, I found out
what type of gun was used. They paid me $80 for my work."

Sunday would have been Lewine's 87th birthday, co-workers said. She had
been recovering from surgery, but was expected to return to the office
as soon as this week.

"I don't understand people who quit," Lewine said in the newsletter
article. "We have the best jobs in the world. I have a front-row seat
to history. What are you going to do that's possibly better than this?"


Lewine was born in 1921 in New York and grew up in Far Rockaway, Long
Island. She graduated from New York's Hunter College, where she edited
the college newspaper and worked as a reporter for the Plainfield, New
Jersey, Courier-News before moving to the Newark AP bureau.

Lewine wrote that she began covering the White House full time "with
the arrival of the glamorous young Kennedys" and recalled that her
working attire often was an evening dress.

She accompanied the family to Vienna, Paris, and Rome and followed
first lady Jacqueline Kennedy on a vacation trip to India and Pakistan,
as well as two yachting excursions in the Mediterranean.

On one of those trips, the first lady's staff attempted to keep
reporters in Athens, Greece, Lewine recalled. But she and several other
journalists on a rented yacht followed her from island to island and,
"much to the anger of the White House," kept track of the first lady's
activities by listening in on ship-to-shore radio.

Lewine's wrote that she was often frustrated at being "relegated to
social and family stories and sidebars while male colleagues covered
the president."

She wrote that it was a "source of disappointment and anger" that the
AP never considered her an equal to male White House colleagues.

That anger, she wrote, energized her "to become a leader in the
movement of women journalists in the 1950s, '60s and '70s to protest
discrimination against women in their jobs and assignments."

To protest the Gridiron Club's policy against women, Lewine founded the
"Counter-Gridiron." A group of women reporters and sympathetic male
reporters met regularly at her home to organize protests, she recalled.
Eventually, she was the second woman invited to join the Gridiron.

Lewine was one of six plaintiffs in a sex-discrimination suit filed
against the AP, which was settled out of court for $2 million and
changed the news organization's policies.

Lewine was also a member of the National Press Club, Executive Women in
Government and the Society of Professional Journalists. She was elected
to the Washington Society of Professional Journalists' Hall of Fame and
to the Hunter College Hall of Fame.

Last year, she was awarded the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished
Service in Journalism, the highest honor bestowed by the Missouri
School of Journalism.

"In times like these, when the credibility of our nation and our
president often comes into question, it is the reporter on the scene
that can raise issues and put the spotlight on problems so the nation
can address them," she said in her acceptance speech.

"Reporters should understand that they have an obligation to search for
the truth and to stand in the front line in holding governments and
officials accountable for their actions."

Many thanks to TheLenGuy for posting this obituary