They still talk about Alycia Lane in Philly

Larry Mendte, a former news anchor in Philadelphia, is interesting here in L.A. pretty much only because he was the colleague who criminally snooped in co-anchor Alycia Lane's email. The scandal that ensued there cost Mendte his job, had a hand in Lane losing hers and landing at KNBC in 2009, and is still a live civil court case there. Now Mendte has written a long piece for Philadelphia Magazine about his life since being fired. He adds no details about the original episode, but says this about his former co-anchor:

On top of it all, Alycia Lane was (and still is) suing me. (There is no money to be had, so the suit seems purely vindictive.) Her attorney was quoted in the paper saying, “We don’t want to leave him with a penny.” The lawsuit is ongoing, but it is only my children who can be hurt now. I wish she would see that. I, like many other people, wish I never met Alycia Lane.

Harsh. By the way, Lane didn't last long as weekend anchor on KNBC — even though I thought she was a cut above the rest. She's now on in the mornings and, based on the promos Channel 4 runs, does a lot of yoga. She recently settled a lawsuit against another Philadelphia journalist.

Noted: There is one other interesting thing about Mendte. He got a job as national TV commenter for Tribune's news stations, after impressing the Randy Michaels-Lee Abrams regime with a spec commentary on how the f-word has become commonplace. Says Mendte: "The commentaries now air in two dozen television markets across the country, and I’m under contract with Tribune. I get tweets, e-mails and Facebook postings from Denver, Seattle, Grand Rapids and all the other cities where I get to rant nightly about social issues, politics and daily annoyances."