Free Republic

NEW YORK -- 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 _ even former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom Stern accuses of attacking him in an effort to suppress negative stories about themselves. Represented by a longtime critic of the Clintons, Stern alleges the defendants defamed and inflicted emotional distress on...

It was 4 o'clock on Friday afternoon, March 31. In a spacious bilevel Greenwich Village loft, two men sat on wrought-iron chairs across from each other at a round glass table.One was Jared Paul Stern, the New York Post's Page Six reporter and magazine editor. The other was Ron Burkle, a West Coast billionaire investor who had rented the loft for a month while he was in New York City considering new acquisitions, including a $2.2 billion bid for a chain of 12 newspapers.But this bit of newspaper business with Stern was different.

By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON, ALLISON HOPE WEINER and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM The New York Post is cooperating with a federal investigation into whether a longtime contributor for the Page Six gossip column — the avidly read daily log of wrongdoing, double-dealing and sexual indiscretions by celebrities both minor and major — tried to extort money from a California billionaire, according to a spokesman for the newspaper. Several people involved in the investigation said the reporter, Jared Paul Stern, had been captured on a video recording demanding a $100,000 payment and a monthly stipend of $10,000 from Ronald W. Burkle in return...