“We know how to destroy people,” Stern
reportedly told Burkle. “It’s what we do.
We do it without creating liability. That’s
our specialty.” (After a federal investiga-
tion, no charges were brought.)
When Johnson ran Page Six, he had the
benefit of the last word in his many feuds
over the years with the likes of Mickey
Rourke (he challenged the actor to a
fight), Alec Baldwin (who was dubbed the
Bloviator), and Paul Newman ( John-
son accused him of lying about his
height). Today, Page Six subjects can
say their piece on Twitter as soon as
the paper hits the newsstand.
Social media is one of the starkest
differences between Johnson’s era
and Smith’s. Celebrities can use social me-
dia to try to beat gossip columns at their
own game, negating scoops by announc-
ing their engagements, divorces, and
pregnancies on their Instagram pages—on
their terms. There are gossip Instagram
accounts like the wildly popular Shade
Room, private gossip Facebook groups,
secret invite-only gossip newsletters, and
fan Twitter accounts that follow the every
move of stars like Beyoncé and Taylor
Swift—all new competition for Page Six.
On March 14, 2018, Smith broke the
news that Donald Trump Jr. and his wife,
Vanessa, were splitting up, and the fiery,
short-lived White House communications
director Anthony Scaramucci tweeted
that Smith was “a person with no mor-
als or journalistic standards. Living off
of others people’s pain. Beware! She will
stop at nothing to hurt innocents. Espe-
cially your children.”(Smith was eventually proved right—the
Trumps split, and Don Jr. is dating former
Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle.)
At the mention of this, Smith seems to sit
up a little taller. “I welcome the feedback,”
she says. “You get people who don’t like
stories, and they’ll go at you. But that’s part
of the fun. That’s part of the game. If we are
dishing it out in a gossip column, you have
to expect to get it back.”here have been tipsters, there have
been sources, there have been mu-
tually beneficial relationships. And
then there was Harvey Weinstein.
For more than two decades, two
New York power brokers—Page Six
and Weinstein himself—used each other
masterfully. One would occasionally take
the other down, but year in and year
out, Page Six sucked information from
Weinstein and Weinstein sucked posi-
tive coverage from Page Six. And when
the subject of this coverage was movie
premieres or after-parties or even the oc-
casional instance of bad behavior, there
was no harm done.
But what happens when one of your
best sources turns out to be an alleged
rapist and the catalyst for the entire #Me-
Too movement?
Weinstein has been more extensively
covered in Page Six than just about any-
one else—more than eleven thousand
times, according to his lawyers. They
tried to use this as an excuse to have his
trial moved last year, describing the cov-
erage as “biased and sensational.” But
a closer look shows that Weinstein’s ag-gressive attempts to shape Page Six cov-
erage go back many years.
In 2000, Froelich was covering a book
party at the trendy downtown hotel the
Tribeca Grand, hosted by Weinstein.
When Rebecca Traister, a reporter for
the elite, brainy Manhattan newspaper
The New York Observer, asked Weinstein
a question he didn’t like, he called her
a cunt, and her colleague Andrew Gold-
man stepped in.
Weinstein grabbed Goldman, put him
into a headlock, and dragged him out
onto the sidewalk, screaming, “You know
what? I’m the fucking sheriff of this fuck-
ing lawless piece-of-shit town.”
“I go in the next day and I’m like, ‘I’m
gonna write [about] it,’ ” Froelich says.
“Richard didn’t want to run it. And then I
said, ‘If you don’t run it, I quit.’ ”
Weinstein’s publicists told Froelich
that the other reporters at the event had
agreed not to write about the incident,
she recalls. Goldman says Froelich called
him that afternoon saying she was con-
cerned about how Weinstein’s publicists
were spinning the incident, so Goldman
decided to file a police report.
The item that ran in Page Six, which
Froelich says was “heavily edited,” be-
gins, “A couple of pushy reporters for the
New York Observer pushed Miramax chief
Harvey Weinstein to the breaking point,
causing an ugly scene at what should have
been a joyous celebration for former MTV
veejay Karen Duffy.”
Today, Johnson says Weinstein’s reps
denied the attack—and quickly points to
the New York Times coverage of the night,
which, like the Page Six item, cast Gold-
man and Traister as the aggressors and
Weinstein as the innocent victim trying to
be civil. When read back the beginning of
the Page Six story, Johnson pauses for a
beat. “Oh,” he says. “Well, that was prob-
ably Harvey’s work. It sounds to me like
the reporters were the victims here, not
the perpetrators.”
When asked if he has any regrets about
how Page Six covered Weinstein, Johnson
says, “Looking back, I wish I’d attacked
him as a pervert from the very beginning,
but, you know, I didn’t realize it. He was
the leading independent filmmaker in
New York for many years.”
Weinstein controlled who got access to
his parties, premieres, and stars. “He was
another person who just implicitly under-
stood how if you give, you get,” says George
Rush, who was at Page Six in the late eight-
ies and early nineties. “While studio publi-
cists would keep a gossip columnist as far
away as possibleCLOCKWISE FROM TOP: MANY PAGE SIX ITEMS TOOK PLACE
AT ELAINE’S, A FAVORITE OF ACTORS LIKE ALEC BALDWIN AND
WRITERS A. E. HOTCHNER AND GAY TALESE. BEFORE SHE WAS A
REALITY STAR, PARIS HILTON WAS A PAGE SIX REGULAR.(continued on page 114)“One could argue they’re Woodward and Bernstein on speed,” says one top TV exec.
ANTHONY BEHAR/SIPA PRESS/AP (BALDWIN). JAMES DEVANEY/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES (HILTON). KEVIN LARKIN/AP/SHUTTERSTOCK (TALESE AND HOTCHNER).