Scandal shows a pen's might

"Snoods, quick, she's got a vole, and it's still alive," he said to his wife, Ruth Gutman, whom he calls by the pet name "Snoodles."

"That cat goes on a kill-crazy rampage when spring comes," Stern said, darkly, returning to his desk. "She eats them," he said. "So."

There is a slightly surreal mood in the farmhouse, where Stern, 35, has spent the 10 days since news broke that the FBI was investigating him for an apparent attempt to swap favorable coverage on Page Six, the New York Post's gossip column, for payments that would amount to $220,000 over the course of the year.

For the first day or two, Stern said, he was truly frightened, thinking he would be arrested imminently.

Since then, though, Stern's outlook has improved. He has turned feverish attention to discrediting Ron Burkle, the California billionaire who secretly videotaped him during two March meetings. On the website Gawker, which he guest-edited over the weekend, Stern launched a cavalcade of gleeful attacks on Burkle, whom he termed a "fishy financier," a "puffy potentate" and a "rubbery robber baron." (Burkle declined to comment for this story.)

In his more optimistic moments, Stern can see opportunity beyond the scandal.

"Not only is he a foppish gossip columnist, now he looks like he's a bit dangerous. It's perfect," said cartoonist Tony Millionaire, a friend from their New York Press days. "I smell a book deal."

Now entering its third week, the Page Six scandal has unfolded in full tabloid splendor in the Post's two major competitors, the New York Times and the New York Daily News. Few journalistic institutions are as despised -- or as avidly read -- in New York as Page Six, where a handful of reporters feeds nuggets of gossip to editor Richard Johnson. Among the current crop of reporters, few were as distinctive as Stern, who covered the dot-com-era social scene wearing ascots and a wide-brimmed fedora.

It is not yet clear whether Stern will face charges stemming from the videotaped meetings. The Post has suspended Stern, a freelancer, and a spokesman for the newspaper said last week that the offer he apparently made on videotape was, if not illegal, certainly unethical.