Popular Gossip Columnist Liz Smith Dies at 94

Touted as one of New York’s most prominent gossip columnists, Liz Smith of the New York Daily News, has died at the age of 94.

In a statement issued to the Associated Press by her literary agent Joni Evans, Smith died in New York on Sunday from natural causes.

For more than a quarter of a century, Smith’s mixture of banter about celebrity culture helped her climb the A-list as high as many of the celebrities she covered. She helped catapult the era of celebrity journalism in print and television with her reporting on Donald and Ivana Trump’s divorce that made front-page news.

In 1976, she started her own column at the New York Daily News and was soon known as the “Dame of Dish.” In 1991, she moved from the Daily News to Newsday, remaining there for four years and signing on Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post.

Smith remained with the Post until she was let go in 2009, but continued writing her column, the syndication of which also continued in Daily Variety after the death of the paper’s own iconic gossip columnist, Army Archerd, in 2009.

Photo credit: Twitter / @CorinnePulitzer