(Earlier)

The Associated Press:

Orin-Eilbeck, a native New Yorker, graduated with honors from Harvard University. She received a master's degree from Northwestern University, Rubenstein said. Orin-Eilbeck, who was fluent in French, also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, he said.

She was a gourmet cook and an avid gardener and was passionate about politics. ...

"She was never part of press group think that so often rules Washington," Allan said in a statement issued through Rubenstein. "Common sense ruled her mind not dogma. I will miss her advice, and the Post readers will miss her honesty and wisdom."

Orin-Eilbeck is survived by her husband, Neville Eilbeck, her father, Aaron Slotkin, and her brother, Mark Slotkin.

No information about burial arrangements was immediately available.

From the New York Post:

Post Editor-in-Chief Col Allan said, "Deborah was one of the nation's finest political reporters. She was never part of press group-think that so often rules Washington.

"Common sense ruled her mind, not dogma. I will miss her advice, and The Post's readers will miss her honesty and wisdom."

Orin-Eilbeck, 59, joined the New York Post in 1977 after a stint with the Long Island Press, and she immediately made her mark on New York politics.

When the Post dispatched her to Washington in 1988, she quickly emerged as one of the nation's top political journalists.

The New York Sun:

Stuart Marques, metropolitan editor at the Post in the 1980s and for many years Orin-Eilbeck's editor, said, "She was all about getting it first and getting it right, and she was totally dedicated to it."

John Podhoretz:

My colleague Deborah Orin-Eilbeck died yesterday, at the horribly young age of 59. Debbie combined a hard-hitting professional style and a wonderfully straightforward personal style in a way that made her alternately hated by many of the people she covered, respected by many of the people who worked next to her in the White House press room, and beloved by her colleagues at the New York Post. We weren't friends, we were only colleagues, and not very close colleagues at that. But Debbie was the sort of person who would offer you aid and comfort at a moment's notice and also the sort of journalist who always asked the right question at the right moment. Her profession is the lesser for her parting. More important, though, she is someone who will be remembered with fondness for the remainder of their lives by literally hundreds upon hundreds of people she worked with, for, and beside. And that's a pretty great monument.

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