• Jon Fine poo poos Rupert Murdoch's attempts at a business channel.

• Jon Friedman opts for Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart as Time magazine's Person of the Year. To be fair: Not an original idea.

• Ed Bradley, remembered.

• Ex-P6er Ian Spiegelman is prepping his first screenplay. Fittingly, it's horror.

• Former LAT scribe Anita Busch links Mike Ovitz to Anthony Pellicano, which means the threats and intimidation aren't ending anytime soon for her.

• Collegiate blog IvyGate hasn't decided whether they're for or against the Ivy League. Just that there's plenty more Aleksey Vayners out there.

• Today show senior producer Tom Mazzarelli is named exec producer at Fox's in-development morning show. His farewell party last night, we sadly missed.

• Katie Holmes, once again, without child. [Mollygood]

• Amazingly enough, Dylan Stableford managed to catch something more boring than Lloyd Grove drunkenly blabbering away: Ian Spiegelman drunkenly blabbering away. [FBNY]

• What in god's name is Atoosa Rubenstein thinking? Hilary Duff guest editing Seventeen? We hope staffers aren't forced to come into contact with her and her massive bodyguard at the office. [TMZ]

• Yes, CBS is that desperate for you to watch their network. [NYT]

• Actual events worth writing about are still going on over at Vibe. It's no South Beach club brawl, but when 20 staffers get fired you definitely have potential for another magazine reality TV show on your hands. [Eat the Press]

• There was a big gossip reading planned, and all the gossips pulled out. Except Ian Speigelman and hostess Deborah Schoeneman of course.

• Guess which magazine sells more copies when their EIC is off having babies? No, really. Guess.

• Blueprint magazine has a new editor in chief, with a very difficult name.

• CBS says a dry-eyed goodbye to Dan Rather.

• We're all left wondering why the hell we gave up hours of our lives on Wednesday night to listen to Anderson Cooper interview Angelina Jolie. Well, at least it was aesthetically pleasing.

• There are now only 7 more days left on Bonnie Fuller's contract. Yeah, we're counting.

Honestly, we would like to give a witty rounded out summary of this posting from Galleycat on the status of tonight's "gossip lit" reading hosted by Deborah Schoeneman which Ian Spiegelman begged everyone to come to … but we fear our shortening won't do it nearly the justice it deserves. From the literary gossip blog:

I was getting all set to write some snappy patter about the reading event at the Bubble Lounge tonight, where Deborah Schoeneman was supposed to host a "Gossip Lit" lineup of fellow ex-Post reporters Bridget Harrison and Ian Spiegelman, as well as Dana Vachon and (our ex-boss) Elizabeth Spiers. But when I went to confirm the lineup on Schoeneman's website, I found that everyone but Spiegelman had bailed, and that the event now featured race car driver Alex Roy, who also chairs The Moth, a literary spoken word series, and Pamela Wasserstein, heretofore best known as the subject of her aunt Wendy's children's book Pamela's First Musical, who will be reading from Elements of Style, the late playwright's recently published novel. This doesn't even sound like a "Gossip Lit" night anymore, even if PW did call Elements "dishy."

Poor Spiegel. Turns out Vachon and Spiers felt it was "too early to be out promoting" the not-yet-published book, while Harrison is avoiding the psychoticness which results from Ian's emailing habits as well as keeping on good terms with Schoeneman's arch nemesis Paula Froelich who hosted Harrison's book party last month. (We doubt Paula gives a shit what anyone past or present Page Six does with their book readings, but the gossip that goes on between gossips is positively devine.)

So, what's a night of gossip books with no gossips? A random sampling filed under the slot "Summer Reading." We really hope y'all had fall-back plans for tonight.

Update 6/21: Contrary to what some media blogs are reporting, Schoeneman never bailed on her own reading series. Her guests did. If writing is re-writing, then reading is re-reading.

Ex-Gossipers Provide Gossip Column Fodder [Galleycat, Mediabistro]
Earlier: Ian Spiegelman Has A Few More People He Can Piss Off

Since he's already cut through any remaining cords of his suspension bridge to Page Six, Ian Spiegelman has resorted to tactics normally reserved for bloggers with book deals: spamming the Interwebs with a requests to attend his book signings. This email made the rounds to many a media type over the weekend:

Hi Friends,

So, yeah, everyone kind of hates book readings. And why not? They're boring as fuck–not as bad as poetry readings, sure, but still kind of awful no matter who's reading what. And yet, I must beg you to attend my reading at Barnes and Nobel on Astor Place this coming Friday, June 9th, at 7:00 p.m. I promise to keep it short and sweet and funny. Also, you'll get to see me stutter a bunch because I get nervous as hell reading out loud. If that isn't incentive enough, Lord knows what is.

Please come. I get jittery enough speaking before crowds, but I can't even imagine what I'll be reduced to if I have to read to an empty room. So. Um? Please show up?

Best,
Ian

If you do make it to the Astor Place Barnes & Noble, do bring your camera phone along with ya, mmm-kay? Not only do we need an updated photo of Spiegelman for our increasing number of items about him, but if there's any chance Jared Paul Stern might show up to offer a fedora of support, we want to capture the moment.

Related: All Ian Spiegelman coverage

We were unable to attend Ian Spiegleman's book party last week, despite our contribution to his "publicity ploy" otherwise known as "media gossip." Have no fear, however. The die hard Observer folks have updated our questions as to weather or not the Page Six staffers showed up to the post Poster's party. Well, sort of.

As Jossip reported last week (the Observer forgot to mention that part) Page Six staffers were rumored to have been told by Col Allen not to attend Spiegelman's party, after a somewhat offensive "I don't do everything drunk" e-mail from the author himself. At the time of the event, we could not get confirmation from the staffers as to whether they were actually banned and or if they would be attending the party.

Supposedly there was a House of Murdoch ban preventing New York Post employees from attending former Page Sixer Ian Spiegelman’s book party last week. (Or was that story just a publicity ploy? Who can tell!) Columnist Braden Keil showed up, though—and so did at least two other Posties, who asked not to be named.

And if an anonymous showing doesn't scream "I'm not supposed to be here!" maybe it screams, "Please give Page Six even more publicity. Nobody will work for us!"

A Book Party [Daily Transom, New York Observer]
Earlier: Did Ian Spiegelman's Email Get His Page Six Pals Banned From His Book Party?

And here we thought today was going be slow and mostly boring. That was until the Enron trial reached a verdict, and we got anonymous tip informing us that recently, Ian Spiegelman sent a somewhat controversial e-mail to Col Allen .

A Page Sixer being controversial? How odd. From a little birdie:

Ian Spiegelman's book party is this eve, and it looks like his die hard friends from p6 aren't going to turn out to support him b/c of a rant-y email IS sent to Col Allan (IS is presumed to have been drunk). Some have been told they can attend on the down low, but cannot be photographed.

Apparently, this is because of the Ad Age interview Spiegelman gave Simon Dumenco, in which he reverberated that Page Six is like a mafia. Maybe that's why everyone is scared to work there? Well, Spiegelman happened to respond to our emails, saying that he was not drunk when he wrote it, nor were his words intended to be off-putting.

You can decide for yourself … the controversial e-mail, originally sent to Col Allan (and supposedly cc'd to Richard Johnson), and then sent to us by Spiegelman himself, is after the jump. In it we find that former Page Six staffer loves the Post but thinks Rupert Murdoch is an evil, evil man. Wow, we didn't know anyone else felt that way.

And while we have no actual confirmation as to whether the staffers were told not to attend the party — or whether they will in fact go or not — we hear that some Page Six and ex Page Six staffers will attend, including Jared Paul Stern … if he makes it out of hiding without being gunned down by Ron Burkle. Ok, now onto the good stuff …

CONTINUED »

In today's Ad Age, Media Guy Simon Dumenco backs former Page Sixer Ian Spiegelman into a wall (sort of) and asks him the tough questions about working for the mafia, er, the Post's most notorious gossip column.

There's a lot of back and forth about Spiegelman's book, his temper tantrum at the Learning Annex, and why Barbra Streisand is a hypocritical basketcase. Then, there's this:

Media Guy: Nicole Kidman's Chinese, you know. Few people know that. I read it in Star.

Spiegelman: Yeah, someone whispered that in [Star editor] Joe Dolce's ear, but it's all wrong. She was grown in a vat for Tom Cruise but her programming got all fried the first time she gazed into his horrible, horrible eyes.

So all of Tom Cruise's wives were grown in vats? How incredibly interesting. See, gossips don't just make things up for their novels. They also make stuff up to try out humor and sell magazines.

Former 'Page Six' Gossip Admits to Making Stuff Up! (For His Novel) [Simon Dumenco, Ad Age]

Gossiping about a fired gossip columnist's book about the gossips he worked with? So meta, they should just call it jossiping.

Ripped from the Gatecrashing pages of the New York Daily News, Ben Widdicombe brings us preview of Ian Spiegelman's about-to-premiere book, "Welcome to Yesterday."

Set in the two days preceding his Page Six axing, Spieglman takes stabs at everyone in the office, from Paula Froelich ("I could've shaved her blonde head right there in the office") and Richard Johnson (with "a mischievous penchant for investigating the conspiracies of any syphilitic who managed to dial his number in the middle of the night") to Col Allen ("Like so many editors, he clearly hadn't worked a reporter's phone since college, if ever.") and Lloyd Grove, (understandably).

Joked one Miramax insider of the Robert Harris character: "I don't know why he didn't just call him Jichard Rohnson."

How easily the folks in this industry will turn around and try to slash each others eyes out! In a fight between Froelich and Spieglman, however, you know Paula would so kick ass. Lloyd Grove, on the other hand, might want to stick with his pen for a sword.

Canned Postie fires back [Ben Widdicombe, Gatecrasher]