NY- The New York Post's scandal-scarred gossip column committed editorial suicide yesterday when it admitted that Page Six honcho Richard Johnson [pictured] took cash from a favored celebrity restaurant.
In a bizarre and unprecedented confession, the gossip page that regularly dishes dirt on celebrities turned its knives inward and eviscerated Johnson for taking $1,000 from Nello Balan, owner of the famed Madison Ave. eatery Nello's.
"Richard Johnson made a grave mistake in accepting cash from Nello Balan," Post editor Col Allan was quoted as saying on Page Six. "After he informed me of his error in judgment, he was reprimanded, and policies were adopted that render such ethical lapses completely unacceptable."
Johnson took the money in 1997, four years before Allan took the helm.
The torrent of allegations came in a signed affadavit from a former full-time Page Six writer Ian Spiegelman, who charged that Post staffers routinely took cash, gifts, junkets and other "freebies" from sources in exchange for favorable stories.
In his biggest bombshell, Spiegelman claimed Allan, Rupert Murdoch 's hand-picked Aussie editor, even "received sexual favors" from strippers at Manhattan topless bar Scores.
"He was ... said to have received sexual favors from women provided by the club in a private room," Spiegelman stated in the affidavit. "Scores received much favorable coverage in the New York Post."
The latest embarassment for Page Six and the Post comes as it is being threatened with a lawsuit by former Page Six staffer Jared Paul Stern, who was axed last year after being accused of trying to shake down California billionaire Ron Burkle for $220,000.
Post spokesman Howard Rubenstein told The News that Allan has been to the Scores strip club.
"But he paid for everything, paid for admission," he said. "He told me, 'Whatever I did was appropriate. There was no sexual contact.' "
Asked why the Post decided to air their dirty laundry on Page Six, Rubenstein said the paper "thought many of the claims were scurrilous and untrue" and "decided let's put it out on the table, let's put it out warts and all."
"If you wait it out and it comes out, any refutation would be one line somewhere," Rubenstein said.
Spiegelman's affidavit was derided as "lies & smears" by Page Six yesterday even as it cited what it called "a four-page list of embarrassing allegations."
Interviewed at his Forest Hills, Queens apartment by the Daily News, Spiegelman said the Post is "making Richard the fall guy here" and that "it was common knowledge" that he'd taken money from Nello's.
In a signed affidavit provided to Stern's lawyer, Spiegelman claimed Allan was one of the worst offenders when it came to taking freebies. He alleged Allan ran a "favor banking" system whose aim was to save pennies for a paper that "operates at a loss of tens of millions of dollars per year."
Allan regularly took free meals, gifts, tickets, liquor and "numerous other perks and freebies, often in exchange for favorable coverage in the pages of the New York Post," the affidavit states.
Allan was also regularly "comped" by Scores where, the affidavit helpfully describes, "women dance naked for money."
Spiegelman claimed in the affidavit there were other journalistic sins at a newspaper where trading gifts for favorable stories was "considered business as usual":
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Spiegelman was ordered to "kill" a Page Six story about a Chinese diplomat at a strip club because it might endanger Murdoch's business dealings in China.
Spiegelman said he got "free food and booze at restaurants and clubs, including Scores" and went on to describe "a culture of freebies" at the Post.
"When I was there, there were no rules on what you could take or what you couldn't take," claimed Spiegelman, who toiled at the tab from 1999-2000 and the freelanced for them until 2004 when he was fired for E-mailing a homophobic message.
Contacted by The News, Stern called the Post's move "a ham-handed attack."
"They ended up shooting themselves in the foot," said Stern, who is suing Burkle and The News, among others.
The Post's admissions come as Murdoch is trying to take over Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, for $5 billion. He has promised to preserve the journalistic integrity of The Journal and said he would establish an editorial board to oversee the news pages.
Federal authorities had been considering prosecuting Stern
on extortion and other charges since The News exposed the Page Six scandal last year. But in January, the feds declined to prosecute.
