Media Wars

What was planned as a storybook wedding for New York's most powerful gossip columnist, Richard Johnson, and his 15 years younger socialite bride, Sessa von Richthofen, was upstaged the day before the ceremony by the revelation that one of his staff writers for New York Post's infamous Page Six column, Jared Paul Stern, had allegedly tried to shake down California supermarket magnate Ron Burkle for $220,000. 

The Daily News, archrival to the Post, broke the story that Sternwho incidentally got his start in professional journalism with his first gossip column in New York Presswas recorded telling Burkle that if he were to invest a great deal of money into Stern's fledgling clothing company, Skull & Bones, the ongoing series of stories embarrassing Burkle in Page Six could be stopped. The scandal has prompted an FBI investigation, which Stern has attempted to spin as a fruitless endeavordespite the e-mail and audio records indicating otherwise. 

It is hard to describe how great the extent of the damage to the Post's credibility this extortion attempt represents. It's probably every bride's nightmare to have her fiancé embroiled in a public career crisis on the eve of her marriage. Such was the setting when scores of highly placed New York media mavens came to Palm Beach to celebrate one of their own.

The atmosphere was palpably tense in the sterile second-floor lobby lounge at the Trump Plaza in West Palm Beach, where about a hundred Johnson and von Richthofen family and friends gathered for the wedding eve reception and dinner. I said hello to socialite John Flannagan, international bad boy Taki Theodoracopoulos, Norman Mailer's son, Michael Mailer, Vegas tycoon Chris Barish and his wife Michele, Men's Health editor Dave Zinczenko, Fulcrum Group financier Chad Ritchie, Allure's Laura Welles, Brooklyn magazine editor Joe Steuer, and many others. I chose not to recognize some other familiar faceslike Jay One Hit McInerney and his new sponsor Anne Hearst, panderer-to-the-stars John Moseley. It is no small irony that so many professional gossips were trying hard not to gossip about a gossip and the scandal was, in the words of The Palm Beach Post's Tom Smith, on everybody's lips unless they were within earshot of the couple or their immediate family.

Some guests seemed concerned for Sessa regarding the appearance of impropriety in her sinecure with Ron Perlman. But I assured everyone that Stressa had nothing on Richard's most recent spouse, Nadine Johnson, who holds the record of being his bagman for over 10 years now. In any case, as Plutarch wrote, Caesar's wife must be above suspicion. More worrisome was the rumor that even though her father, Renee von Richthofen, appears to be a bluff and hearty Teutonic aristocrat, he was really born on the wrong side of the blanket and only adopted his father's family name later in life. As one wag in the society media put it, Her real name might be 'von Dumbrowski.'

The overall tone of the weekend's nuptials was one of tremendous concern that Richard would get axed over Stern's and the rest of the staff's well-known penchant for being on the take. It has long been my opinion that Richard often fails to rein in the avarice and disregard for truth that his staffers naturally gravitate toward when there are so many publicists and promoters with huge budgets hoping to gain their favor.

Given that Stern was recorded stating to his intended victim, Ron Burkle, that his colleague at the Page Six desk, Chris Wilson, was responsible for the troublesome (and possibly untrue) smears against Burkle, I waxed reminiscent about my own experience with Wilson's perfidies.

In early March of 2002, I was in Langan's on 47th Street during happy hour, and through the crowded room I spotted Chris Wilson with The Observer's George Gurley having an animated conversation with Barry Levine and Courtney Callahan from the National Enquirer. As I sidled over to the huddle with my back turned (some uncharitably disposed readers might call this eavesdropping), I was able to discern Wilson making an emphatic case to Levine, the Enquirer's editor, that he and Gurley could give him the girl they insisted was then having an affair with Sopranos star James Gandolfini. Wilson said, She won't admit to you that she fucked him, but we'll tell you as 'sources' that she did. And you can quote from Page Six on top of that.

Later on, I asked Callahan what that was all about, and she told me that Wilson and Gurley were encouraging the Enquirer to print a story echoing the one Wilson was doing for Page Six about Cynthia Demoss, a girl who told them she was Gandolfini's mistress. Callahan asked me to look into it for her, and so I did.

I found out that Gandolfini was a habitué of Gaslight on 14th street, a joint where he'd had several encounters with Demoss. The staff there made a convincing argument to me that Demoss was a creepy barfly who seemed to be stalking Gandolfini until they finally had to eighty-six her. Peter Collins, the bar's owner, told me that there was no way his friend Gandolfini had ever gone home with her. The chick was such a pain in the ass, he said I mean, she used to steal the customers' drinks. I reported to Callahan that the whole thing looked like a set up. 

Weeks after that conspiracy was launched at Langan's, the Demoss story received a blind item in Page Six, three more items naming names in Page Six, a long piece in Cindy Adams' Post column, an Enquirer feature story and even a Gurley interview (at length) in The Observer. Who knows how much this spurious nonsense contributed to the eventual breakup of Gandolfini's marriage and family? As a PR campaign for a struggling actress, it showed some determination on the part of two guys for whom misrepresentation has possibly become second nature.

With blood in the water, the media sharks are in a feeding frenzy, attacking one of their own. The Daily News will hammer away indefinitely, hoping to use this to harm the Post and build its circulation at the Post's expense. The Post's editor-in-chief, Col Allen, has been forced to address this issue and has publicly responded with assurances that he will tighten up Page Six. This statement is widely interpreted to mean that eventually some heads are gonna roll. The Post will resist axing Richard Johnson because of the decades of investment the institution has made in building his imprimatur. As of this writing, Wilson is the most vulnerable member of the staff because The Daily News has already singled him out for accepting all expense paid, first-class trips from interesting sources. Wilson could be the next to go as this cancer metastasizes.

Thus far, the most remarkable thing about this whole imbroglio is how little has changed. All the skeletons seem to remain moldering in their unmarked graves. Aside from Stern's downfall, the only tangible result of the nasty Page Six gossip-credibility revelations is that the Times, a publication obsessed with its own respectability, has preemptively terminated its gossip column, BoldFace (itself an homage to the Page Six format, highlighting the names of its subjects), while everywhere else, it's business as usual. The gossip industry juggernaut is too profitable to reform. 

Predictably, Stern is trying to salvage his career by assuming the mantle of victimhood. Ultimately, the fallout may come down to just how far the FBI decides to take its investigation. No official statement regarding the progress of the investigation has been released, but in many circles the mere existence of such a public probe by the Feds has laid an indelible taint on the journalistic future of the embattled journalist. As for Burkle, the billionaire may have received far more publicity than he ever wanted from his secret Page Six tapes, but it may actually have the side effect of cleaning up the gossip gameat least temporarily. 

Doug Dechert is a former contributor to the New York Post and currently pens a column at Scandalmonger.net.