Old habits die hard at Page Six—but it seems a couple of newcomers are doing their damndest to keep them alive.
Yesterday, we reported recently hired Page Six scribe Corynne Steindler's plan to throw herself a welcome-aboard party and let Thom Bar pick up the tab. Steindler, till now the error-prone insult blogger behind jossip.com, had to cancel the event late yesterday after New York Post editor in chief Col Allan learned of the arrangement, which violates the paper's new stance on freebies.
"Col was on the warpath," says an insider. But Steindler isn't the only one who doesn't seem to understand how much things have supposedly changed since April, when Jared Paul Stern was busted trying to use the column's clout for personal gain. Sources say full-time staffer Sarah Polonsky has been flagrantly running afoul of the Post's much touted ethical guidelines since she made the jump in July from the National Enquirer.
Several weeks ago, Polonsky showed up at Manhattan's Gin Lane, uninvited, for an intimate birthday dinner for a colleague from the New York Daily News. When the check came, Polonsky attempted to get out of paying; according to one source, she actually told the waitress, "I work at Page Six. Don't you know who I am?"