Somebody Lost the Disclosure Memo

If you've been reading Beatrice since last year, you'll recall that the New York Post gossip column, Page Six, has a habit of running items about authors who write for HarperCollins and its various divisions without mentioning the fact that the book publisher is owned by the same media mogul that owns the newspaper. They're up to their old tricks again today, with a lengthy item about Bill Stadiem, the ghostwriter for Essie May Washington-Williams (Strom Thurmond's "secret black daughter"). Apparently Stadiem's contract calls for credit on the jacket, he didn't get any, and now he's pissed. Regan, who must secretly be pleased to be interviewed for any story that doesn't have to do with Bernie Kerik, still manages to put on an angry face for reporters: "He apparently has nothing better to do with his time, and maybe if he finished his second book, which is overdue, by the way, instead of calling gossip columnists, then he would amount to something."

She also mocks Stadiem about the subject of that second book, "his obsession with hookers," but the author correctly points out that "there's not a publisher in the world more interested in sex than Judith Regan." But my best part of this free infomercial is the ending: "Asked whether he feared that his second book was in jeopardy now that he has royally riled Regan, Stadiem replied, 'Hopefully commerce will conquer all.'" I'm sure it will: if commerce can get one of America's oldest newspapers to abandon journalistic integrity, it shouldn't have any problem convincing Judith Regan to hawk another sex book.