From Left: Lane, Eisen, Mendte, and Shuster

Let’s see if I’ve got this straight. Comely (but brunette, and therefore evil) anchoress Alycia Lane of Philadelphia’s CBS affiliate sends a few provocative snaps of her bikini-clad self to broadcasting colleague Rich Eisen in April 2007. Eisen wife, and also broadcasting colleague, Susie Shuster, sees the e-mails and replies herself, leaving claw-marks across the aforesaid Lane’s face. Envious and resentful CBS3 co-anchor Larry Mendte months before used a keystroke logger to gain access to Lane’s e-mail accounts, and coincidentally the entire exchange arrives by undisclosed fashion to Page Six. Lane’s previously rising stock takes a hit now that most Google searches with her name also return the phrase “Homewrecking Slut” in them.

So far so good. But not as good as when Lane takes the opportunity to smack a NYPD officer in the face in December 2007, while adding, for good measure, “I don’t give a fuck who you are! I am a reporter, you fucking dyke!”

That doesn’t help so much when contract renewal time comes around. The one-bite rule applies, so Lane exits and tears, recriminations, and lawsuits follow. The Feds serve a warrant on Mendte in March, and this week he pleads guilty to one felony count of unauthorized access to Lane’s e-mails, with sentencing to follow in November.  There’s more flaming rubble on their resumes than in all of South Ossetia, but it is so worth it if you get to take down your nemesis. That way, everybody wins.

. . .

Well, almost everybody. Back in Chicago, former NBC5 reporter Amy Jacobson has her own pile of rubble to contend with, but without the compensating gratification of being able to destroy anyone else’s career. So far. But that’s what lawyers are for. And they laid waste to a few forests last month by filing suit against, well, everyone who has ever worked for CBS2 in Chicago, with the apparent exception of Larry Mendte. We’ll leave it to legal scholars to dissect the merits of the case, but perhaps a few broader conclusions can already be drawn from it. If you’re going to go interview a suspect in a missing persons case, it may be better not to do it in a halter-top bikini. Woodward and Bernstein did very little work in their swimwear. Neither did Edward R. Murrow. If you’re attired in such a fashion that you wouldn’t look out of place wearing tequila-shooter bandoliers and serving shots to frat boys at some dive on South Padre Island, you’re probably not going to win any Peabody Awards.

In fact, maybe everyone who works, or has worked, for any of the affiliates in Chicago might give some thought to keeping anything even remotely having to do with bikinis  entirely separate from their work lives. At this rate we’re going to end up watching Ron Magers doing the 10 pm news in a Borat thong.

The Very Public Self-Destruction of Alycia Lane (Philadelphia Magazine)