As always, Dan Gross Michael Klein had it first last night: CBS 3 news anchor Larry Mendte’s alleged snooping in former co-anchor Alycia Lane’s Yahoo e-mail account has cost him his job.

Mendte’s sudden salary drop immediately turned our minds to our September 2007 issue and his appearance in our Receipt feature, which tracks a week’s worth of spending by a notable Philadelphian. While not the most profligate spender we’ve had, the newsman’s $6,657.37 outflow puts him pretty close to the top. As you’ll see below, a goodly chunk of that total was for contributions to various investment accounts — which we hope, for his sake, have done well. But a burning question remains: With Mendte gone, who will buy milkshakes for newsroom?

DAY ONE
Toll (E-ZPass): $2, Atlantic City Expressway
Toll (E-ZPass): $.70, Garden State Parkway Exit 30
Mailing documentary to film festivals: $9.60, Ocean City post office
Extra-large iced nonfat latte: $5 (+ tip), Ocean City Coffee Co.
Two kids’ water bottles that say “Michael” and “David”: $21.38, OC Sun Hut
Extra-large iced latte and mango iced tea: $9 (+ tip), Ocean City Coffee Co.
Fruit and muffin: $7.50, Bashful Banana Bakery and Cafe
Salads, salmon, crabcakes: $45, Hula Grill
Ride tickets: $20, Gillian’s Wonderland Pier
Kiddie-size vanilla cone: $2

DAY TWO
Extra-large iced latte: $5, Ocean City Coffee Co.
Sunday donation: $50, St. Frances Cabrini Church
Sunday Inquirer and AC Press: $6 + tip, girl outside the church
Breakfast on the Boardwalk: $15 + tip, George’s
2 extra-large lattes: $9, Ocean City Coffee Co.
Pizza: $8, Mack and Manco’s
Fruit and muffins: $12, Bashful Banana Bakery and Cafe
Seafood dinners: $55, Mike’s Seafood, Sea Isle City
Gas: $65.24, Lukoil
Tolls (E-ZPass): $3, Ben Franklin Bridge

See the rest of Mendte’s (former good times) spending in our archives.

The other shoes just keep dropping in the Alycia Lane saga. The Daily News’s Will Bunch reports this morning that Lane has sued the station for defamation, slander and libel. Attempting in a 40-page legal filing to show a history of callous treatment by the station, Lane highlights the circumstances around her first appearance on the Dr. Phil show in 2004, calling it “a humiliating experience … forced upon her by her CBS 3 bosses in a bid to boost ratings.”

In our February 2008 story “The Very Public Self-Destruction of Alycia Lane,” Vicki Glembocki was the first to break the details behind Lane’s appearance with Dr. Phil:

So in spring 2004, then-general manager Peter Dunn sent Lane to Los Angeles to interview Dr. Phil McGraw. To promote his new series Relationship Rescue Retreat, Dr. Phil had granted interviews to reporters in several large markets.

Lane and a cameraman sat in the Dr. Phil studio, watching as two upcoming episodes were taped. Then, with the audience gone, the interview began. It started out as a regular Q&A. But then something happened. Lane asked Dr. Phil, who knew that her divorce had been finalized in November, “Why is divorce so hard?” Her voice cracked. Her chin quivered. She wiped a tear running down her cheek. “You’re crying for the man you wish he was, not the man he was,” Dr. Phil told her. At the end, she hugged him.

Back in Philly, when people at the station watched the raw tape, they realized Lane was suffering more than anyone knew. But management was aware that other stations in Philly were having lots of success with female newscasters airing first-person stories about their own struggles. The previous fall, pregnant NBC 10 anchor Renee Chenault-Fattah brought cameras to her ultrasound. And it was May sweeps.

Lane expressed her misgivings about the footage — she hated to appear weak. “She didn’t want it to air,” says her sister Nicole. But Lane also knew that the station had spent lots of money to send her to L.A. Plus, if viewers saw her in this light, they might stop calling her an ice queen.

The station advertised Lane’s segment — titled “Demons of Divorce” — during CSI and Without a Trace, with Lane’s face filling the screen, that tear running down her cheek. Portions of her interview aired for two days. “I was bawling my eyes out just to see how much pain she was in,” Nicole remembers. Lane never watched it, though it aired while she was on-set. Instead of looking at the monitor, she turned around in her anchor’s chair and plugged her fingers in her ears. Even so, she got thousands of e-mails of support from viewers. People stopped her on the street and hugged her.

The Dr. Phil interview gave the station its highest Nielsen ratings of the month. It was CBS 3’s best May sweeps since 1995.

Read the full story in our archives.

CBS 3 anchor Larry Mendte is under investigation by the FBI for allegedly snooping in his former co-worker Alycia Lane’s Yahoo e-mail. In this excerpt from our February 2008 story “The Very Public Self-Destruction of Alycia Lane,” we take a look back at the tone of the newsroom in the early days of their time on the air together.

On September 15, 2003, Team Mendte and Lane debuted on Eyewitness News. Lane’s main role at CBS 3 was quickly apparent: to look gorgeous and fix the troubled station brand. At first, she was flattered by being called “the hottest story in local TV.” But it didn’t take long for viewers to e-mail CBS 3 and call her snooty and impersonal. Most of the e-mails were from women — not a good sign, since TV stations vie for a coveted demographic of females ages 25 to 54. And she wasn’t exactly making friends with everyone in the newsroom. In front of several people, she screamed at a production assistant who was fresh out of college, causing the woman to cry at her desk; another time, while shooting a promo, she got so angry she hurled her earpiece, which ended up hitting a staffer in the forehead.

This is where the station bosses made their first Alycia Lane mistake. They seemed to give her a pass after the incidents, worried about their star anchor’s feelings. Plus, they figured some staffers were jealous of the new girl, who was pretty much a sensation before she even walked in the door. This sent a very clear message to those around Lane: She was special; don’t mess with her. It also sent a very clear message to Lane: You can do as you please.

Read the full story in our archives.

Even though anchorprincess Alycia Lane has been vindicated in the alleged cop-slugging, dyke-slurring incident last December that ended her Eyewitness tenure over at CBS 3, gay cops are still pissed. New York’s comic-book-ready Gay Officers Action League is “outraged and deeply concerned” that prosecutors lessened charges to two misdemeanor-level offenses.

Thomas Verni, lead GOAL spokesman, issued this statement to Newsday:

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Dan Gross reports that after five grueling minutes in a Manhattan courtroom with boyfriend Chris Booker at her side, Alycia Lane is pretty much a free woman.

An assault charge against Lane, stemming from a December 16th incident in which she was accused of having slapped a New York police officer, was reduced to “obstruction of governmental administration” — did the judge make that one up on the spot? — and a second-degree harassment charge was added. In a deal with prosecutors that didn’t require her to enter a plea or admit wrongdoing, Lane left the hearing with an “adjournment in contemplation of dismissal,” which basically means that any and all charges will be dropped entirely and expunged from the record in six months if she manages to remember that hands are not for hitting.

Gross promises to try for a quote from Lane herself soon.

Alycia gets her day in court [Mighty Dan Gross]
The Very Public Self-Destruction of Alycia Lane [Philly Mag]

Who leaked Suzy Shuster’s scathing e-mail to Alycia Lane about the bikini photos? Not Suzy Shuster, according to her husband, NFL Network talking head Rich Eisen.

The Associated Press found this out recently from a story it ran on January 30th about Lane’s pending lawsuit against CBS 3. The AP ran this correction last night: “In a Jan. 30 story about fired TV news anchor Alycia Lane, the Associated Press erroneously reported that the wife of NFL Network anchor Rich Eisen tipped tabloid gossip columnists to the existence of bikini photos sent to her husband by Lane.”

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After rumors surfaced earlier this week that Alycia Lane was about to put her Washington Square condo on the market, the big question became: Where has Alycia gone to get away from Philadelphia’s not-so-friendly faces?

One of Lane’s former colleagues tells the Daily Examiner that the embattled ex-anchorprincess is hiding out at boyfriend Q-102 DJ Chris Booker’s New York apartment, and a friend of Booker’s confirms that he’s been high-tailing it up there for the past couple of weekends.

Thing is, is New York really that safe a getaway considering Page Six’s Mighty Dan Gross-like obsession with her?

Farewell Philly? [Page Six]

PHOTO: New York Post

So says the Mighty Dan Gross, whose relentless pursuit of the melodramatic trials and tribulations of Philadelphia’s former anchorprincess has gone well beyond obsessive in the search for answers about her colossal breakdown. Here’s what he’s got today:

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The City Paper added an original take to the Alycia Lane media pile-on by interviewing some of Philadelphia’s most revered denizens: mob associates. Writer Gabrielle Valentine called a couple of area goombahs (and goombahrinas) to get their take on how the anchorprincess has been handling herself. An “associate” of reputed crime leader Joseph “Uncle Joe” Ligambi told the CP that he likes Alycia better now, but her boy-band-haired radio jock boyfriend, Chris Booker? Eh … not-a so much-a.

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National tabloid queen Britney Spears and our own Alycia Lane have more in common than just Dr. Phil. Here’s the tale of the tape:

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