| Gail Collins | |
| Birth Name: | Gail Gleason |
| Birth Date: | 25 November 1945 |
| Occupation: | Journalist, op-ed columnist |
| Notableworks: | As Texas Goes...: How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present |
| Alma Mater: | Marquette University (B.A.) University of Massachusetts Amherst (M.A.) |
Gail Collins (born November 25, 1945)[1] is an American journalist, op-ed columnist and author, most recognized for her work with The New York Times.[2] [3] Joining the Times in 1995 as a member of the editorial board, she served as the paper's Editorial Page Editor from 2001 to 2007 and was the first woman to attain that position.[2]
Collins writes a weekly op-ed column for the Times from her liberal[4] perspective, published Thursdays .[2] Since 2014 she has co-authored a blog with conservative journalist Bret Stephens entitled "The Conversation", at NYTimes.com, featuring bi-partisan political commentary.[5]
Born in Cincinnati in 1945 as Gail Gleason,[1] Collins attended Seton High School before earning a B.A. in journalism at Marquette University in 1967 and an M.A. in government at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1971.[6] [7]
Following graduation from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, she wrote for Connecticut publications, including the Hartford Advocate,[8] and, in 1972, founded the Connecticut State News Bureau, a news service providing coverage of the state capital and Connecticut politics.[9] When she sold the bureau in 1977, it had grown into the largest service of its kind in the United States.[9] As a freelance writer in the late 1970s, she wrote weekly columns for the Connecticut Business Journal and was a public affairs host for Connecticut Public Television.[9] [10]
From 1982 to 1985 Collins covered finance as a reporter for United Press International.[6] [9] She wrote as a columnist for the New York Daily News from 1985 to 1991.[6] [9]
From 1991 to 1995, Collins worked for Newsday.[6] [9] She then joined The New York Times in 1995 as a member of the editorial board,[7] and later as an op-ed columnist. In 2001, she was named the paper's first female Editorial Page Editor, a position she held for six years. She resigned from this post at the beginning of 2007 to take a six-month leave to focus on writing her book When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present, returning to the Times as a regular columnist in July 2007.[2]
Beyond her work as a journalist, Collins has published several books: The Millennium Book, which she co-authored with her husband, CBS News producer Dan Collins; Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity and American Politics; America's Women: Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines; the aforementioned When Everything Changed; and As Texas Goes: How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda.[2] [11] [12] She also wrote the introduction for the 2013 50th-anniversary edition of The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan.[13] In 2019, her book No Stopping Us Now: The Adventures of Older Women in American History was published.[14]