Forced to come to terms with her identity and her father's attitudes, she said, she learned not only to judge people as individuals but also to be skeptical and to realize that "what everybody believed to be so maybe just wasn't so".
During the Kennedy administration she spent a year as a spokesperson for the Treasury Department before being hired into the Washington bureau of the Times as an economic correspondent.
[2][page needed] She was widely esteemed for being able to clearly explain complex information on such topics as tax policy, mutual funds and the federal budget, and she had many front-page stories.
"[5] She was particularly proud of her coverage of possible tax fraud by then-President Richard Nixon,[6] and she also reported on the Equal Rights Amendment and other feminist efforts in the 1970s.
In 1974, despite her prominence, she learned that of 31 reporters in the Times Washington bureau, her salary was sixth from the bottom; only one man, who had decades less experience, was paid less.
[7][2][page needed] The suit was settled in 1978 after Shanahan had left the Times to serve two years as assistant secretary for public affairs at the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare during the Jimmy Carter administration.