What ever happened to the days when longtime writers were revered by our local papers? Then again, what ever happened to all of our local papers?

A few months back Nat Hentoff, 83, who had written columns about jazz, civil liberties, and politics for The Village Voice since 1958, was given the ax.

And just yesterday we learned that another institution in this town, gossip columnist Liz Smith, who turned 86 earlier this month, received a Dear John letter from her boss at The New York Post. The letter was written on February 9 but she didn't receive it until the 19th. Talk about lousy belated birthday presents.

"Like so many other newspapers around the nation, we are buffeted by unprecedented economic gales," wrote Col Allan, The Post's editor in chief, in the kiss-off letter. So is Ms. Smith's $125,000 annual salary really going to help The Post get out of the red? I highly doubt it.

Liz began her career in this town in 1953, as an associate producer ("a grand title for what I actually was—a booker") for Mike Wallace's television program. For the past thirty-three years, her gossip column has been carried in one or another of the local papers. When I moved here in 1983, the first thing I did every morning was to turn to Liz Smith to find out what was going on in the entertainment industry. (Old habits die hard; I still look for her column every day, even though for the past year it has only been running three times a week.) Liz has always been very kind to the Paley Center; a few years back she wrote an item on a Dorothy Loudon tribute I curated and the house was packed.

No doubt Liz will have the last laugh. She will now spend most of her time posting scoops on the year-old website wowOwow.com (of which she is a founder and part owner). In addition she will continue to write her column five days a week for syndication to newspapers across the U.S.—and she'll also pen a twice-weekly column for Daily Variety. Oh yes, and one other thing: She has signed on as a contributor to Parade magazine, which is included in more than 470 Sunday newspapers including—you guessed it—The New York Post.

At the very moment yesterday when the news was breaking about her firing, Liz was attending the Paley Center's annual gala, where she told WABC's Bill Ritter, "I was one of the early victims, I guess. I'm a realist. There's no point in being angry." [Watch entire interview]

"When I came to New York there were nine newspapers. I worked for seven of them," she said. Now there are three, and they're all struggling to survive. Liz, on the other hand, has been given the freedom to reach new heights in her career.