Jane Hansen, former television and print media journalist, has died, surrounded by family, after 18 months with brain cancer.

A statement issued by her brother said: “To all that knew and loved my sister. Jane passed away peacefully at approximately 11.40pm 6 August. Jane put up an amazing fight right till the end and never once complained, and never lost her sense of humour this whole time.”

Her early television work was in the early ’90s with Network Ten‘s Hard Copy, an Australian version of the tabloid US show of the same name, and Seven‘s Real Life.

In 1995 she joined the Nine Network, working in various roles before becoming a reporter for A Current Affair.

She left Nine in 2008 — around the same time that an anonymously-authored book, Boned, was published.

Boned — the title taken from the word allegedly used by then Nine CEO Eddie McGuire to describe “sacking” Today co-host Jessica Rowe — was a fictional tale set in the world of commercial television.

Years later, Hansen outed herself as the book’s co-author with former reporter Fiona McKenzie.

Writing in The Sunday Telegraph in 2017, Hansen said:

“As veterans of the television world, we were horrified by the despicable behaviour of the men in charge. So we decided to make our small protest against it. When we wrote Boned, we had both left our jobs. We had young babies and we were freelancing. We’d also been beaten down by the boys’ club. We’d been bullied. But we were never victims.”

In 2009, Hansen joined News Corp as a columnist and reporter. She was also writer and host of Mother’s Guilt, a podcast exploring the criminal case against Kathleen Folbigg.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald, Nine News. TV Week, 14 September 1991, 5 November 1994.