Columnist Gail Collins

Gail Collins: author, groundbreaking journalist and journalism award recipient.

Collins started working for The New York Times in 1995. She joined the staff as a member of the editorial board and as an Op-Ed columnist. In 6 short years she managed to become the first women to ever be appointed editor of The New York Times editorial page.

This was not the first major accomplishment for Collins. Before she joined the Times she founded the Connecticut International Bureau. When she sold the Bureau in 1977, the Bureau was one of the largest news services in the country and had an impressive circulation of 30 news chains.

Collins had other miscellaneous jobs in the journalism field before joining The New York Times including working as a reporter for the United Press International and as a columnist for New York Newsday and the New York Daily.

Collins writes mostly political columns on everything from political advertising to political grooming, but she has also written on a wide range of topics including the soap opera “Guiding Light”, which recently went off the air. No matter what her topic, Collins manages to bring her signature sense of humor to every column.
It was that sense of humor and her down-to-earth tone that helped her land the prestigious New York Women in Communications Matrix award in the newspaper category in 1989.

In 2007 Collins stepped down as editor of the editorial page and took a leave from work in order to complete her latest book “When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present.” The book was published in October 2009.

As the title suggests the book is about the trials and tribulations of American women over the past 5 decades and actually is intended to take over where her lost book “America’s Women” left off. In the course of her writing, Collins reveals several statistics from the past that are unbelievable now including that in 1960 two-thirds of women that participated in a survey didn’t like the idea of a female president. Collins also discussed the mistreatment of women in professional careers including doctors and pilots.

With facts like that in mind, journalist Lesley Stahl sat down with Collins to talk to her about her new book and asked her the loaded question:

First question: Did we win? Have we achieved equality?

We definitely won. I’m not quite sure I know exactly what equality is, so I’m not sure that I would be willing to go that far. But to look back, which it’s hard to do, I was talking to the people who’ve been there. You forget what it was actually like. And, for perspective, you really have to go back and look at, say, 1960. And it’s such a stunner on every possible level.

Collins has also written “America’s Women,” “Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity and American Politics” and “The Millennium Book,” which she co-authored with her husband, Dan Collins who is the senior producer of CBS News.com.