Beginning next week Liz Smith will be posting more news, hot gossip and opinions all the time on wowOwow — free from the constraints of newspaper deadlines. Thursday will be the last Liz Smith column for The New York Post — the first time in 33 years that Liz Smith’s column will not be in a New York newspaper. This sad news for the New York print business is spectacular news for us. Our fabulous and beloved Diva of Dish will be here on wowOwow, posting exclusive-to-Liz breaking celebrity news as it happens. It will, occasionally, be highlighted with audio and film and all the tools of an Internet entrepreneur.

In addition to her work as a founder of wowOwow, Liz Smith has just been named a Contributing Editor at Parade Magazine. Her next cover story for Parade appears this coming Sunday, and is an in-depth look at Liza Minnelli. Parade has the largest circulation in America (33 million sold, distributed in more than 470 Sunday newspapers and with a readership of over 72 million). Additionally, her column will continue to appear in Variety, in syndicated newspapers and on websites such as MyWay.com.

The New York Post editor-in-chief Col Allen has written to Liz to say, "Like so many other newspapers around the country, we are buffeted by unprecedented economic gales” and could not renew the contract for what he described as a "legendary column."

Liz Smith’s column began February 16, 1976, at The New York Daily News, then the city’s largest newspaper. In 1991, hot with her scoops on the Ivana/Donald Trump divorce, her column moved to New York Newsday. For more than a dozen years, Liz was published in Newsday (appearing in the Queens, Long Island and New York City editions), the New York Post and the Staten Island Advance, making her the first and only columnist to ever appear in three metropolitan newspapers at the same time. In 1995, when Newsday folded its Manhattan edition, she moved to the New York Post. Her column has always been known for wit, humor and a sense of fair play. Liz remarked famously: “Gossip is just news running ahead of itself in a red satin dress."

During a 1979 newspaper strike, Liz’s Daily News editors asked her to appear daily on WNBC-TV’s Live at Five, and she stayed with the program for 11 years. She won an Emmy in 1985. Her 2000 memoir, Natural Blonde, made The New York Times bestseller list. In 2005, Smith published a food memoir, Dishing.

Liz has raised more than $20 million in the fight against illiteracy and more millions in the fight against AIDS. Other causes close to her heart include The Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City, The New York Landmarks Conservancy, The Police Athletic League and The Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders.

Born Mary Elizabeth Smith in San Antonio, TX, she has never lost her gracious Southern accent or sense of humor.

For more:

NY Times:  Liz Smith Bids City Tabloids Goodbye 

Liz Fans: A Photo Essay of the Diva of Dish