Chaunce Hayden, the Steppin’ Out editor whose name regularly appeared in Page Six until he found himself embroiled in a false report about a Bam Margera and Lynsi Smigo sex tape, is the center of this Radar profile, which lists his various past careers: male stripper, car washer, failed punk rocker, bartender, swimming pool digger. Hayden acknowledges that nobody actually reads his publication, which is littered around New York and New Jersey, which might be a growing concern because until lately, it’s been his single entry into getting his gossip items, and his name, in the press. Then the Post banned him (Smigo has since filed a $10 million defamation suit against him and the paper); MSNBC blacklisted him after a he caused a commotion on Joe Scarborough’s show; he’s persona non grata at ABC, when he went on-air to report Diane Sawyer had just shushed him; and Howard Stern would like to see him dead after Hayden said, on ABC, that Stern should be looked at for insider trading for allegedly leaking details of his then-impending move to Sirius. Interesting, though, that Radar is reporting all of this. Not because the gossip industry isn’t the pub’s territory — it is — but because paragraphs like this:

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To be sure, it’s quite fair that Lynsi Smigo — the fiance of Opie & Anthony radio host Gregg “Opie” Hughes — would be so disgusted that somebody would insinuate she made a sex tape with Jackass‘ Bam Margera that she would sue over the matter. It’s just sort of silly to think that the matter will see a courtroom.

Back in April, Page Six ran an item with the sex tape claim, provided by Steppin’ Out editor Chaunce Hayden. Which explains why, in addition to the Post, Hayden and P6 editor Richard Johnson are named as defendants. Nevermind that Johnson & Co. have since thrown Hayden under the bus, blaming him for the erroneous report and severing a lengthy relationship with the column regular. But it’s not like Hayden has the cash Rupert Murdoch’s Post does.

Smigo is looking for $10 million. As a consolation prize, she’ll take 10 minutes with Hayden’s tongue. [TSG]

On last night’s Countdown, Keith Olbermann preemptively named Page Six’s Paula Froelich his “Worst Person in the World” after finding out she was working on an item, for today’s column (here’s the item), that accused colleague Chris Matthews of gunning for the Meet The Press gig at Tim Russert’s funeral. Matthews denied the charge on the record, and said the “agent type” he was speaking to was real-estate developer Bob Monahan, and that their conversation wasn’t about his plot to secure the gig, but about an upcoming speech Matthews was going to give to a group of mayors. As for Olbermann, P6 quotes a source saying he’s threatened to quit if he isn’t named to the MTP gig; Olbermann also denies the claim. And it better be true, because everybody we’ve spoke with says Olbermann and Matthews are about the last people NBC News president Steve Capus plans to install on the Sunday morning talker. Russert himself took a liking to political director Chuck Todd, though it’s also unusual that Russert is said to have bandied about Todd’s name as his pick of successor, since Russert, while still alive, had no plans of giving up the show anytime soon.

Former Page Six scribe, Law & Order inspiration, and current UrbanDaddy blogger Jared Paul Stern’s second (alleged) attempt at extorting money from Ron Burkle has failed. The first time around, he was reportedly caught on tape offering the Friend Of Clinton the opportunity to pay for favorable coverage in the column with cold hard cash. This time, he sued over defamation about that first time around. Oh well: A judge has tossed his lawsuit against Burkle and the Clintons.

When it was revealed this week that former CBS-Philadelphia news anchor Alycia Lane might have been the victim of email hacking by then-co-anchor Larry Mendte, who stands accused of leaking her emails to the media, plenty of copy was used speculating why he would sabotage his one-time friend and ratings-winning partner. (Mendte is now being investigated by the FBI for his alleged unlawful snooping.)

Hacks like us, however, began connecting the dots between rumors that he leaked her personal emails to the press and the stories that appeared in Page Six, May 2007, about Lane sending emails with racy photos to sports anchor Rich Eisen, which were intercepted by his wife Suzy Shuster. Was Mendte the anonymous source of those incriminating emails that nearly cost Lane her job?

Today, very interestingly, Page Six itself is joining the speculation. Indeed, they’re reporting on the rumors that Mendte was their source.

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Alycia Lane, the former CBS anchor in Philadelphia who was fired after calling a cop a “dyke bitch,” may have been the victim of email snooping. By her ex-co-anchor.

Larry Mendte, who teamed with Lane in September 2003 and quickly saw their ratings shoot skyward, is being investigated by the FBI on allegations that he opened Lane’s private Yahoo email and then leaked what he read to the media.

On Saturday, federal agents raided Mendte’s home and seized a computer. Should they find evidence that Mendte, who earns an estimated $700,000 a year, was leaking her secrets, Lane’s case against CBS, for wrongful termination, could gain a helluva lot more ammo. (More on that below.)

Lane, of course, made headlines in May 2007 when her emails, with some racy photos, to sports anchor Rich Eisen, which were intercepted by his wife Suzy Shuster (thanks to their joint email account), who promptly replied to her with a scathing email.

But staffers at the station are left wondering: Why would Mendte 1) read her private emails; and 2) leak their contents? After all, weren’t these colleagues friends?

Perhaps not, say current and former staffers: “Their off-air relationship had its highs and lows; they seemed to be barely speaking by the end of last year.”

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Was Harvey Weinstein so furious with Page Six’s report about Sharon Stone’s amfAR antics that he bum rushed every other gossip in the industry asking for a counter attack?

That’s what we’ve been hearing since the Post’s item ran on Saturday, which chronicled Stone, who hosted the event, which raised $10 million, crawling into Diddy’s lap to discuss his crack budget and spending hours on “self-indulgent commentary.”

Weinstein, whose Weinstein Company helped underwrite the event, scored at least one coup: Fox 411’s Roger Friedman battled back against Page Six, as we discussed earlier today, defending Stone’s hosting abilities. Nevermind that Friedman and Weinstein are friends, and part of the gossip’s Cannes column was spent talking about the film Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which Weinstein’s company will be distributing abroad.

Bless any celebrity that takes on the unenviable task of entertaining the wealthy and powerful at a charity event in an effort to raise money for a good cause. That’s what Sharon Stone did at the annual Cannes event for amfAR, the AIDS research organization whose capitalization nobody can quite get right, hosting the four-event auction that nabbed a cool $10 million, with an assist from Madonna.

But Stone’s method of scrounging up cash didn’t win everyone over.

A scathing Page Six report last week had a spy recounting her jokes about Diddy’s budget for crack and all the sob stories she told about herself. “Her whole speech was about her,” said P6’s source. “What she has done, how her crusade had affected her . . . all with the backdrop of dying kids on the screen behind her. Then, it was [bleep] this, [bleep] that throughout the whole auction. It was vulgar beyond belief … At one point she actually said one of the items from the auction could be hung from ‘your [beep] ring.’”

That didn’t sit well with Fox 411 gossip Roger Friedman. Which is why he’s on the attack today against Page Six’s report.

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ETHICS Page Six’s Paula Froelich could not attend the party where a drink named after her would be poured because the event was an open bar, not cash. [Gawker]

Page Six editor Richard Johnson vs. Steppin’ Out editor Chaunce Hayden in the Bam Margera Sex Tape Retraction. [Gawker]

While this morning’s Page Six item about Keith Olbermann recyles previous Jossip reports, it also makes one thing more clear: News Corp. has many vehicles to push its anti-MSNBC/GE crusade, and Bill O’Reilly’s diatribes are just one of them.

Repeating our previous reports about Keith Olbermann’s behavior and conflicts with other talent like David Gregory and Dan Abrams, P6 also finds itself on the front lines of O’Reilly’s battle against the network — which, it turns out, News Corp. tried to quell at the highest levels, and is now more than content to keep supporting. Just like the real war!

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Somehow the travails of Buzz Bissinger v. Will Leitch, Jared Paul Stern v. Ron Burkle, Page Six v. Vanessa Grigoriadis, Cathy Horyn v. Giorgio Armani, Dale Peck v. Rick Moody, and Leonard Wieseltier v. Andrew Sullivan get boiled down to what’s going on between Lauren Conrad and Heidi Montag:

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Page Six continues to be the only gossip sheet buying, or propping up, Chace Crawford’s sexuality ploy: “NEWLY single Chace Crawford isn’t mourning the loss of his ex-girlfriend, Carrie Underwood. The “Gossip Girl” heartthrob was all over town last weekend, drinking and flirting with gaggles of gals. On Saturday night, Crawford sat “between two beautiful brunettes” at La Zarza in the East Village until 1 a.m. “flirting and taking shots of Patron.” Then on Sunday, Crawford and his co-stars Penn Badgley and Ed Westwick had a boys’ night at Stanton Social on the Lower East Side. Our spies there saw Crawford sipping blood orange margaritas and befriending his waitress.”

Of course, this could easily be interrupted as Chace going out with his gaggle of fag hags and drinking girly drinks.

Nice to see Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post doing the bidding of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News this morning:

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For someone who should be scraping the bottom of the publishing barrel, author and news-article-re-poster James Frey certainly seems to have crawled his way to the top. Over Nan Talese’s body.

Not only has his “switch” to fiction – one rumor we continue to hear from publishing insiders is James always imagined himself a novelist, but publishers knew they could better market a memoir, so he, stupidly, made the jump – been nicely swept under the rug (with A Million Little Pieces continuing to move copies), but his new effort, Bright Shiny Morning, on bookshelves May 13, is being feted with a May 8 Sotheby’s party with a limited edition of the novel, in collaboration with photogs Terry Richardson and Richard Prince, to be released. He’ll then head off to Anaheim to speak at the American Library Association convention.

Having ditched Random House imprint Double Day, Frey is now at HarperColilns. Which might explain why today’s Page Six carries the flattering news; HarperCollins, like the Post, is owned by News Corp. That, and former MSNBC programming whiz Davidson Goldin, who is counseling Frey on all things media relations, appears to be damn good at his job.

Nylon is FIGHTING BACK against Page Six’s claim that “crazy barking dogs” at the mag’s offices have delivery workers scared for their safety. But who could be afraid of their adorable Greene Street pooch?

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It’s a rare event when Page Six issues a correction — which means when they do, it’s handed down from the top. Or Steve Rubenstein.

So today’s item, which backtracks on a report that Darren Star stole the idea for his Cashmere Mafia from ex-friend Candace Bushnell’s Lipstick Jungle, should be cause for suspicion.

P6 says their March 25, 2008, item is the one they’re retracting, but in fact it was their original item, on April 30, 2007, that claimed Star stole the concept and pitched it to ABC while Candace was bunking at his house; now the Post says ABC approached Star directly. “The two shows were conceived independently,” they insist. (It was that first item, last year, that also claimed the 13-year friendship between the two had gone sour after the backhanded dealings.)

Which begs the question: Just who threatened what against the Post to score this event?

Read P6’s original item in full below.

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Jared Paul Stern’s alleged shakedown of Ron Burkle is finally getting the Law & Order treatment, and Mo Rocca will guest as the former Page Sixer ripped from the headlines. But in this version of events, Stern’s character suffers the fate of a car bomb. In real life, he simply did what any struggling writer might do: found a blogging gig.

Are we reading this correctly? The New York Post’s Page Six is calling out CNBC’s Erin Burnett for being a China-lover, when owner Rupert Murdoch couldn’t be described any other way himself? [P6]

Yesterday’s New York University panel about celebrity gossip and its players, sponsored by The Atlantic magazine and aptly titled “The Britney Show,” brought together heavyweights like Page Six’s Richard Johnson, Star’s Bonnie Fuller, and X17’s Brandy and François Navarre, who were kind enough to leave their six million dollar Pacific Palisades home to hang in the city.

Johnson shot himself in the foot when he called celebrity blogs “parasites,” accusing them of not “generat[ing] their own news stories,” which is amusing since Page Six wouldn’t get through the day without lifting items from many of these bottom-feeding blogs, and the brand’s own effort at competing with them failed after just three months.

And the always quotable Brandy Navarre, who is building a cache of Miley Cyrus photos in the hopes she becomes the next trainwreck poptart, admits her agency is “trying to get the shots before they go into rehab.”

And that’s when her God complex shines through: “Mr. Navarre suggested that a pack of paparazzi may have been able to prevent John Lennon’s murder in 1980; Ms. Navarre said photos of partying starlets have sometimes spurred their families to get professional help,” reports AdAge.

And the little matter of X17’s own photogs allegedly brutally assaulting individuals to within an inch of their life? Well, so long as they’re not celebrities, preventing their murders isn’t really the Navarres’ concern.