"News" today, from the Post or WWD, that former MSNBC editorial director Davidson Goldin, and sometime New York Sun columnist and former NY1 anchor, is advising author James Frey on his media strategy won't be a surprise to Jossip's readers; we were the first to report the news back in February. Frey's wife, Maya, is a college friend of Goldin's from their days at Cornell, which is how the pair teamed up.

Now Goldin has formally signed on with former Star editor-in-chief Joe Dolce, to form DolceGoldin, a media strategy firm that, among other things, takes meetings at Soho House and hopes to generate a client list by word of mouth (how novel!). Dolce's life partner, Jonathan Burnham, runs HarperCollins, which published Frey's book — and thanks to HarperCollins and the New York Post both being owned by News Corp., it explains why the Post is so adept at delivering favorable coverage of Frey. Goldin's experience in television news and Dolce's experience fending off personal attacks on blogs are their selling points to clients.

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.

Might Eliot Spitzer have made himself the sacrificial lamb for ethics reform in Albany? Is his ouster what's required to achieve, as Davidson Goldin argues, "the seminal event that brings about the changes he promised on Day One but failed to deliver while in office"? Perhaps.

And in fact, he may have forecast it.

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James Frey has big plans with new new novel Bright Shiny Morning. To generate buzz for the May HarperCollins release, Frey is planning a nationwide tour that "sounded more like a concert tour," says Page Six, which discussed the details over dinner at Le Bernardin — perhaps at the request of his publisher, a News Corp. corporate cousin to P6's New York Post?

"We're talking about having bands, other authors reading their work. We may try to include some pyrotechnics," Frey says.

And who might have given him that idea, or others? Quite possibly, it was Davidson Goldin, the recently removed MSNBC daytime programming chief.

We're told Goldin has signed on to provide media consultancy to Frey, a move that makes sense given the other rumors we've heard: that Goldin wants to make himself into a media strategist.

We called Goldin to confirm the details, and while he remained mum on specifics, he told us, "James' wife [Maya] has been a friend of mine since we were in college together, and I've been happy to give him guidance."

We also called Le Bernardin to confirm what the Sixers ate. They said even less.