Last week, news of Jared Paul Stern's Page Six payola scandal rippled through New York's media circles with all the force of an 800-pound bomb. The story has all the stranger-than-fiction twists you could ask for: media figures accused of Mafia-like strong-arm tactics, boldfaced names in compromising positions -- and at its core is a terrific Los Angeles story, hinging on a Southland billionaire and with tantalizing implications about the entertainment industry's backroom dealings.
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L.A. to Page Six scandal: ho-hum
In Hollywood, a N.Y. Post gossip columnist's alleged extortion attempt barely raises an eyebrow.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday April 14, 2006 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 2 inches; 76 words Type of Material: Correction
Gossip scandal: An article in Wednesday's Calendar about local reaction to a gossip column scandal said the New York Daily News reported that Page Six columnist Richard Johnson at the New York Post accepted a $50,000 expenses-paid bachelor party trip to Mexico from "Girls Gone Wild" founder Joe Francis. The Daily News corrected the story Tuesday. Francis said Johnson paid his own airfare and declined Francis' offer to pay for food and liquor at the party.
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So why hasn't the scandal captured this city's imagination?
Media observers and Hollywood publicists alike say L.A.'s status as a one-industry town is part of it.
"It takes more to make a scandal in Hollywood than Jared Paul Stern," said Mickey Kaus, who writes the Kausfiles blog for Slate.com from Los Angeles. "Hollywood has looser ethical guidelines. People get gratuitous [movie] producer contracts just to keep relationships going and they don't pretend there are no conflicts of interest. Nobody makes any bones that it's a mad scramble for sex, power and money."
Stern, 35, a fedora-wearing longtime contributor to the New York Post known for casting his gimlet eye over the city's ever-changing bonfire of vanities, catfights, freakouts and power grabs, was caught on tape in an FBI sting allegedly attempting to extort at least $200,000 from Southland supermarket billionaire Ron Burkle. According to the surveillance tape, in exchange for $100,000 upfront and a monthly stipend of $10,000, Stern promised him positive coverage in the tabloid's most influential gossip column, Page Six.
While the number of publicists per capita in Los Angeles is among the highest in the world and gossip mongering ranks near the top of the city's list of high-profile exports, there is no local equivalent to Page Six. In fact, the closest thing Hollywood has to Page Six is Page Six itself; the Post is available for home delivery here, and the column regularly covers and skewers the Southland's rich and infamous. Meanwhile, Los Angeles' chattering class has remained largely indifferent to what has shaped up as 2006's biggest media story so far -- think of it as this year's answer to Jayson Blair.
It's not as though Angelenos remain habitually passive in the face of local intrigue -- just look at the fallout from February's Ferrari Enzo crash on Pacific Coast Highway. That story has become unavoidable dinner-party conversation, its development tracked avidly in newspapers and on local TV news. But the general shrug toward Payola Six, which is, at its core, a Los Angeles story with an entertainment industry hook, speaks volumes about gossip culture and the balance of power and media in L.A.
