Frances Lewine, 86, Pioneering White House Reporter

Frances Lewine, White House correspondent for the Associated Press during six presidential administrations, died Saturday in Washington, D.C. She was 86.A stickler for accuracy, she taught many young journalists the ropes and was known for staking out the Sunday morning talk-show sets to query newsmakers as they left. For years, Lewine and Helen Thomas, then of the rival United Press International, competed head-to-head on major Washington stories. The two wire services provided news to virtually every newspaper, radio and television station in the nation. Worried about being scooped by the other one, the two reporters kept each other in sight at all times.“We were inseparable, very competitive,” Ms. Thomas said. “At the end of the day, we always went out to dinner and were friends. But if either of us had an exclusive, it stayed an exclusive.”She came to Washington in 1956 to cover the activities of first ladies and the Washington social scene, and her “working attire was often an evening dress,” she said. She was one of the leaders of women’s efforts to gain admission to the National Press Club’s luncheons, where newsmakers often gave speeches that resulted in stories. Women were relegated to the balcony, toting their own brownbag lunches, while men dined in comfort below. “The slow drip drip method,” as Lewine called it, took until 1971 to wear down the tradition.A similar campaign was founded around the Gridiron Club, the exclusive group of journalists and politicians that excluded women from its annual event.Lewine left the AP in 1977 to join the Carter administration as deputy director of public affairs in the Department of Transportation, until Carter left office in 1981.“When President Reagan was shot, I walked over to CNN that day and asked to help,” Lewine said in a 2005 article in a newsletter for Time Warner, CNN’s parent company. “My claim to fame was, I found out what type of gun was used. They paid me $80 for my work.”She was born January 20, 1921, in New York City and grew up in the Far Rockaway section in an extended family household that included her first cousin, Richard Feynman, who later won the Nobel Prize in physics. Lewine graduated from Hunter College in New York and worked for the Plainfield (N.J.) Courier-News and then the Newark bureau of the AP. She later traveled with the presidential and vice presidential press corps on overseas trips. When Jacqueline Kennedy’s staff tried to keep reporters away during a trip to Athens, Lewine rented a 54-foot yacht with several other reporters and followed her from island to island, keeping track of her activities by listening in on ship-to-shore radio. At a televised news conference in the 1970s, Lewine asked President Ford if he agreed with his administration’s advice urging federal officials not to patronize segregated facilities. He said he did. Then she asked why he played golf every week at Burning Tree Country Club, which refused to admit women.

Frances Lewine, 86, Pioneering White House Reporter

Frances Lewine, 86, Pioneering White House Reporter

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