The Very Public Self-Destruction of Alycia Lane

Lane instantly darted an e-mail back to Shuster, which she later described to the Inquirer: “Oh my God. I think you’re misconstruing this. [Rich and I] are friends and I don’t think you know that. This is absolutely innocent. Please, let me put your mind at ease. … I would never want to inflict that on you.” She wanted Shuster to know she wasn’t that kind of girl. In fact, defending herself, she later told people that she hadn’t lost her virginity until she was 23.

On the Monday night after the Post called, Lane couldn’t sleep. She sat in bed in the $674,000 condo she shares with her two dogs in the Lippincott building, on Washington Square, holding her computer on her lap, logged onto the Page Six site, waiting. And waiting. And then, around four a.m. on May 1st, it appeared: BIKIN-E-MAILS RATTLE TV WIFE. There was no mention that Lane and Eisen were friends, or that she knew he was married. No mention of the response Lane had sent Shuster. There was just the story of the bikini photos and then Shuster’s e-mail, verbatim.

Alycia Lane couldn’t breathe. She was so distraught, she later told people, she wanted to die. Literally.

The next day, Lane left messages for both Eisen and Shuster, begging them to explain to the world what had happened, but she never heard back from either one. “This entire issue could have been avoided had Mr. Eisen just called the Post and set the record straight,” says Lane’s attorney Rosen. Eight months later, Eisen finally did address the issue — though he didn’t say much. “I’ve known Alycia for many years as a broadcasting colleague and as a friend,” he says, through his publicist. “I wish her nothing but the best.”

When someone from the New York media gossip website Gawker.com sent Lane a snitty e-mail about the story, she wrote back: “Yes, you are right I wish I could disappear. … Maybe I will disappear … maybe that would make you feel better.”

At CBS 3, everything was disrupted by management strategizing about how to handle the situation. There was talk of maybe even leading the 11 o’clock broadcast with the photos — it was May sweeps. But instead, Lane released a statement characterizing her relationship with Rich Eisen as “purely platonic.” She didn’t apologize for sending the photos, or for showing poor judgment. She didn’t apologize at all, saying only that it was “unfortunate that there was a misunderstanding over some harmless pictures of myself and my friends on vacation that I shared with him.”

That refusal to take responsibility was typical, says a source who knows Lane well: “No matter what the situation is, it’s not her fault.”

WHAT LANE DIDN'T understand when she moved to Philadelphia was this: Philadelphia. In her first weeks here, her colleagues tried to warn her: This city is obsessed with TV newspeople. But Lane didn’t seem to get it, and was surprised to see her face on SEPTA buses and all over the Daily News, which published her stats: five-foot-five, 118 pounds, size two. “It was a shock to her that she was being written about,” says Elizabeth Flores, who worked with Lane in Miami. “Here in South Florida, it doesn’t happen.”