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- Shana Alexander 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 Cecelia 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,” 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. 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.
- Shana Alexander war eine US-amerikanische Journalistin. Sie war Autorin und Kolumnistin des Life-Magazins und dort die erste Frau in dieser Position. Darüber hinaus war sie allerdings besser bekannt für ihre Debatten bei „Point-Counterpoint“ im Nachrichtenmagazin 60 Minutes mit dem als konservativ bekannten Journalisten James J. Kilpatrick. Geboren wurde sie als Tochter des Komponisten und Pianisten Milton Ager (für sie schrieb er 1927 das Lied „Ain't She Sweet“) und der Journalistin Cecilia Ager. Alexander schloss 1945 das Vassar College mit dem Hauptfach Anthropologie ab. Durch einen Ferienjob bei der New Yorker Zeitung PM, wo ihre Mutter arbeitet, kam sie zum Schreiben. Sie war freischaffende Autorin für Junior Bazaar und das Magazin Mademoiselle, bevor sie als Reporterin für Life arbeitete. Dort schrieb sie in den 1960er-Jahren die Kolumne „The Feminine Eye“. 1962 schrieb sie den Artikel „They Decide Who Lives, Who Dies: Medical miracle puts moral burden on small committe“, welcher eine große Debatte innerhalb der Vereinigten Staaten über die knappe Verfügbarkeit von Dialysegeräten auslöste. Alexander war ab 1969 die erste Herausgeberin der monatlich erscheinenden Frauenzeitschrift McCall's. Sie verließ diesen Posten jedoch 1971 wieder, da sie nach ihrer Feststellung eine Feigenblattfunktion in einer sexistischen Umgebung hatte. 1975 schrieb sie Kolumnen für Newsweek und wechselte dann zum Fernsehen. Sie ersetzte in der Sendung 60 Minutes den Journalisten Nicholas von Hoffman, um für die nächsten vier Jahre in „Point-Counterpoint“ mit James J. Kilpatrick zu debattieren. Obwohl sie selbst diese Zeit herunterspielt, wurden die Debatten mit Kilpatrick stark wahrgenommen, so dass diese später in Saturday Night Live, mit Jane Curtin in der Rolle der Alexander und Dan Aykroyd als Kilpatrick, parodiert wurden. Einer ihrer Artikel wurde 1965 unter dem Titel The Slender Thread mit Sidney Poitier und Anne Bancroft verfilmt. Shana Alexander verstarb im Alter von 79 Jahren am 23. Juni 2005 an einem Krebsleiden. Sie war zwei Mal verheiratet, beide Ehen wurden geschieden. Ihre einzige Tochter beging 1987 Suizid.
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