Jared Paul Stern is an American editor, publisher, photographer, designer and former freelance reporter and columnist for the New York Post who gained national notoriety when he was embroiled in a scandal with California billionaire businessman Ron Burkle. Prior to the event, Stern had written and helped edit the popular "Page Six" column for 11 years. Stern was a founding editor of Page Six magazine and wrote the New York Post columns "Nightcrawler" and Fashion Buzz for several years in addition to editing the Post's Books section. He worked as the Executive Editor of Star Magazine with a salary of $300,000 a year, worked at New York magazine twice, and has had work published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, GQ, Details and Spy magazines among other publications. He currently edits DRIVEN, an online magazine about cars and style published by UrbanDaddy, owns a clothing line, Skull & Bones, has an antiques store in Maine, Cape Porpoise Outfitters, publishes the Sea Salt dining guide series, works as a freelance photographer and curator, is the literary editor of Room 100 magazine, and contributes to A Continuous Lean. Born in Philadelphia and raised in Canada after his parent divorced and his mother remarried, Stern is a graduate of Bennington College.
Burkle scandal
In April 2006, supermarket magnate and Democratic fundraiser Ron Burkle released selectively edited transcripts of six minutes of videotape of two face-to-face meetings he had had with Stern the previous month. In the sections made available to the media, Stern offered to work for Burkle on a freelance basis for $220,000 a year to help him deal with inaccurate reporting about the billionaire in various gossip columns. Burkle released copies of e-mails from Stern in which Stern allegedly inquires about the status of expected payments. Burkle had previously complained about erroneous stories about himself in the Post to Rupert Murdoch, his neighbor and owner of the newspaper, in a personal letter, to which Murdoch reportedly never responded. Stern claims in a series of published interviews that he had been "set up" by Burkle, and was only in meetings with him to discuss a possible investment in his clothing company, Skull & Bones. The Post suspended Stern while the video clips were made public, and apparently fired him on April 21, 2006 though he was only working there part time on a freelance basis. Criminal charges were never filed against Stern; federal prosecutors deferred to Attorney GeneralAlberto Gonzales, who declined to prosecute. In October, 2006, an unnamed source leaked to the press that Stern had landed a contract with Simon & Schuster to publish a book, tentatively to be called Stern Measures, about the Post, its gossip pages, and various scandals with which he is familiar. However, on August 7, 2007, Gawker.com reported that the book deal did not reach fruition. In January 2007, the Associated Press ran a story saying that the alleged investigation into Stern had been dropped. Stern later filed a civil lawsuit against not only Burkle, but also Frank Renzi, Michael Sitrick, William Sherman,, The New York Daily News, Hillary Clinton, and Bill Clinton, claiming libel, emotional distress, interference in business relationship, injurious falsehood, abuse of process, and civil conspiracy.
