As the Houston Chron said today, Jane Ely was a reporters reporter and when it came to politics everyone needed to know Jane. She died yesterday and I will miss her. For over 25 years Jane and I ran across each other and sometimes I tried to use her to get a good story in the paper for my clients. She usually balked at that. She was not use to folks spinning her and she would see the BS very fast. But when it came to trading gossip over a drink or two she was just great. She knew the problems politicians face and how they are human and she understood that they sometimes make mistakes. Now that is a good reporter, deciding sometimes not to print what she knew because it really was not the public's business.

Here is part of the Chronicle's story about Jane:

Longtime newspaper reporter Jane Ely, a steely-eyed, salty-tongued political insider whose telephone calls could make elected office holders tremble, died Monday of lung-related illness. She was 69.

Ely, the younger daughter of Fort Worth banker and cattle broker William Ely, began her Houston journalism career in the mid-1960s as a police reporter for the Houston Post. She remained with that publication, working as a political writer and assistant city editor, until joining the Houston Chronicle in 1988.

At the Chronicle, Ely first covered national politics, then joined the editorial page staff as a columnist. She retired in August 2004.

“She was sharp as a tack, hard as nails and as subtle as a ball peen hammer,” said former Chronicle editorial page editor Frank Michel. “She was just what you want in somebody like that.”

‘Way ahead of anybody’Bill Coulter, who worked with Ely at both newspapers, recalled she was at home with “old-school reporters who stayed up late and played poker. They used to hang out in the press club and the Rice and shut it down every night. She was a hard-liver. She loved antiques. She loved the state of Maine, drinking, smoking and inside politics stuff. She was often way ahead of anybody else.”

Former Lt. Gov. Bill Hobby — Ely’s boss at the Post — called her “one of the finest reporters, political and otherwise, I’ve ever known.” Chronicle editor emeritus Jack Loftis noted that “anyone ranking early contributions of women in Texas politics would have to place Jane Ely’s name near the top.”

Jane, we will miss you.