Jared Paul Stern

A former contributor to the New York Post's Page Six gossip column who was accused of trying to shake down Los Angeles billionaire Ron Burkle in exchange for good press will not be charged in the case. The case involving Jared Paul Stern is being closed, said an individual familiar with the federal investigation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision was not yet public. Stern's lawyer confirmed that his client would not be indicted.

After a season in the limelight as a suspected extortionist, a former gossip columnist said Wednesday that he was relieved he wouldn't face federal charges of demanding payments in return for favorable coverage, and vowed to sue Los Angeles billionaire Ron Burkle and the New York Daily News for spreading the stories that ruined his career.

For months, former New York Post scribe Jared Paul Stern was at the center of unseemly accusations that he tried to shake down billionaire Ronald Burkle in exchange for good press in the newspaper's gossip pages. Now Stern has fired back in a lawsuit filed Thursday against Burkle, the Post's archrival Daily News and even former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), whom Stern accuses of attacking him in an effort to suppress negative stories about themselves.

Jared Paul Stern, the gossip writer, was mixing Campari-and-sodas on a recent evening when more urgent matters drew his attention. He stepped past his collection of walking sticks and looked onto the porch. "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."

A former contributor to the New York Post's Page Six gossip column who was accused of trying to shake down a billionaire in exchange for good press has signed a book contract. For more than a decade, gossip columnist Jared Paul Stern "played a major part at the world's most powerful gossip column," said Mark Gompertz, executive vice president and publisher of Simon & Schuster's Touchstone Fireside imprint.