Schreffler brought Gatecrasher—once Page Six's competition—back to the paper with Sean Evans (also canned) after legendary NYDN gossip Ben Widdicombe left it for dead (or Star, which he left after five or so months). Sarah Polansky (who went from the National Enquirer to Page Six, where she was fired for being exposed by Radar as a "swag hag") filled in for Evans. I guess Polansky is the only person left over there? We also hear Chris Rovzar at NY Mag's Daily Intel was offered the job, but (predictably) turned it down, possibly because if he were to quit New York Magazine, Manhattan's Gossip Girl-watching population would have to be tear-gassed and read the riot act.

So: it looks like nobody's running gossip or getting decent scoops at the Daily News but the once a week Boris and Natasha-esque sideshow of Rush and Molloy — and they haven't been at the top of their game, lately — so maybe they'll try to bring Ben back again? He was awesome and he's currently doing AOL's Stylelist but I sincerely doubt that Daily News has the cash to compete with whatever he's getting at AOL. That said, the NYDN's gossip pages are just rehashing national items, and there're sleazier places to go for that dirt, so really, they might want to invest in some talent before they become the Knicks of New York's two-team gossip leagues.

Update: Maybe there's absolutely no way the NYDN can compete for Ben Widdicombe. We just heard that Widdicombe's working with TMZ as their executive editor. He hasn't let his New York apartment go, yet, and "needs the money." He's on a six-week trial with them. Well, if it's scratch you're after, Harvey Levin's got plenty to throw around. There're worse places to sell out, I suppose. Another tipster reports that Harvey Levin's been looking since last fall to fill that position, so it's a long time coming. He's met with plenty of people, but it's been difficult to fill the position because of Harvey's temperament.

2nd Update: Sheffler writes in and asks us when will we will be "updating/terminating your piece from the web" because, as it turns out, she wasn't shitcanned, but is leaving the Daily News to go to Bonnie Fuller's Hollywood Life thing. Enjoy your press-releasey goodness:

"I'm ecstatic to join Bonnie Fuller and the team at HollywoodLife.com as the West Coast Bureau Chief. I look forward to bringing my experience in celebrity news and lifestyle editorial to what will be a fabulous online destination for all women," says Schreffler, West Coast Bureau Chief, HollywoodLife.com.

In her new position, Schreffler will work closely with Fuller and Will Lee, executive editor, on editorial strategy, content development and overall direction of the site. HollywoodLife.com, which focuses on celebrity, style and lifestyle news, will re-launch in November 2009 with a new design and editorial focus, targeting style-minded women, ages 18-35...

...Where it will terminate their faces via awesome Bonnie Fuller'd website wonderfulness with little to no discretion. May I suggest a theme song? This is what the future of celebrity gossip looks like:

Witness his email interview with Chris Rovzar of New York, who elicited (GASP!) a reaction from the tight-lipped protoblogger to an item in Out that said the Drudge Report proprietor "happens to love Chaka Khan, The Young and the Restless, and sex with men" but is homophobic and anti-abortion-rights. Drudge:

"False. False. False. I do not love sex with men. My site is not anti-gay. I present both sides of the anti-choice-life issue... I liked Chaka in the eighties, and have not watched Young and the Restless in twenty years! But I do watch Judge Judy!"

The bit about not loving gay sex is a red herring: Drudge has never been said to particularly relish his homosexuality or embrace it; in fact his gay romantic/sexual side has been described (when alleged) as conflicted and awkward.

David Brock, the former right-wing writer, wrote in his memoir Blinded by the Right about a "scary" date in which Drudge, after bringing Brock flowers and navigating the Santa Monica gay strip "like a pro," stepped on a competing suitor's foot "really hard" (in Drudge's purported words) in a nightclub to scare him away from Brock. He also reproduced an overly blunt email in which Drudge wrote, "Laura [Ingraham] spreading stuff about you and me being fuck buddies. I should be so lucky."

Alec Baldwin stated that Drudge made an advance on him in an ABC Studios hallway, a proposition that had "kind of a creepy quality to it."

Given his purported bumbling of the matter, it's entirely conceivable that Matt Drudge has gay sex without "loving" it, at least on a level he can admit to himself, or furtive gay relationships that stop well short of that sort of intimacy.

For his part, Drudge has historically sought to blur the issue of his sexuality, tending to portray himself in ambiguous or asexual terms. He once said on his radio show, "There is no secret life here. It is found literally on the website, because this is all I've been doing." Drudge denied he was gay to the Miami New Times in 2001, even as he launched into a disquisition on (as the New Times put it) "the reigning DJ king of gay circuit parties" and summarized his nightlife thusly: "I go to straight bars, I go to gay bars." That clears that right up.

Drudge has offered more straightforward denials. He once told the Times of London "I'm not gay — I was nearly married a few years ago." But he refused to discuss his personal life further, leaving people looking for details to find stories dished out by the likes of Brock and Baldwin.

None of which is to say Drudge's statement to Rovzar isn't useful: At the very least it shows that the troubled kid treated "like shit" in high school is decidedly unhappy and uncomfortable being placed on a list of gay people, powerful though they may be. Drudge may traffic (quite well) in labels, but "gay" is one he just can't stand. At least not for himself.

I'm sure it is in that spirit that online gossip site Jossip is sending off Widdicombe. 'Ben Widdicombe Exits Gossip Industry, Leaving Gaping Aussie Void,' runs the headline. Har har. There's only one problem: the Daily News gossip writer used to bed Jossip's wide-eyed young founder, David Hauslaib—and one could easily take his reference to Widdicombe's gaping void as the bitchy recollection of a former lover, rather than collegial ribbing.

Incidentally, Hauslaib also dated Patrick Healy, Hillary Clinton's persecutor at the New York Times, who was in turn the former boyfriend of Chris Rovzar, the ethereal young reporter who took over from Widdicombe at the News' Rush & Molloy column when the Australian gossip graduated to his own column. And that proves what, exactly? Only that New York's gay media subculture is even more incestuous than its heterosexual equivalent; the partner-hopping is simply less well examined.

Photograph, clockwise, from top left: Jossip's David Hauslaib; burnt-out gossip columnist Ben Widdicombe; Chris Rovzar, now at New York Magazine's Daily Intelligencer; and Patrick Healy of the New York Times.

Out Magazine, putting the Times' "gay mafia" at number 12 in its power list, names nine Times reporters and editors: Richard Berke, Ben Brantley, Frank Bruni, Stuart Elliot, Patrick Healy, Adam Nagourney, Horacio Silva, Stefano Tonchi, and Eric Wilson.

But Intelligencer's Chris Rovzar thinks the gay magazine has underestimated the true extent of the network. "But come on, Out editors — there are hordes of other gays working in high-powered positions at the Times. You could only come up with nine?" (The list does indeed omit Jeff Zeleny, Sewell Chan, Michael Barbaro, Jeremy Peters and Denny Lee, for instance.)

"Have you slept with no one lately?" asks Rovzar. The 27-year-old Intelligencer writer, pictured right, certainly has: willowy Rovzar's an expert on Times gays in part because he dated Patrick Healy and, by all accounts, broke the political reporter's heart. (Healy's to the left.) We don't feel particularly guilty exposing Healy's private life; he won the enmity of Hilary Clinton's campaign with his enthusiastic coverage of the candidate's problematic marriage.

Incidentally, all three national political reporters for the Times—Healy, Nagourney and Zeleny—are gay. Just saying, in case social conservatives need any more reason to question the political objectivity of the Gray Pink Lady.

Reporting to editorial director Ben Williams, Coen will oversee all of the daily online content, which will have her working closely with former Rush & Molloy stringer Chris Rovzar, who has signed on to edit the online Daily Intelligencer column (with a co-editor to be hired). What enticed our former co-worker Coen to leave the warm embrace of Conde Nast? Maybe the slow pace of change at 4 Times Square? Maybe the large chunk of change they've offered her at New York? We've heard whispers about both those possibilities, but the lady isn't saying. But if her magical vagina works as well on the job front as it does in her personal life, expect VF.com to either take off like a rocket or sink like a stone right after she leaves.

Cruising Gawker [WWD]

• Meet the man who's obsessed with Hillary Clinton—the political editor of the New York Post. [The Politico]
  
• New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus: "For a first novel to be reviewed it has to seem strikingly good; that's always been the case and that always will be. It's unfortunate, but that's how we do it." [Knight News]
  
• NYDNer Chris Rovzar needed six other reporters to help him with a story about smokers in the cold. Moving off the gossip beat is hard! [NYDN]
  
• Soho mainstay Honmura An to close this weekend. The end, when it came, was swift. [Eater]

• Above: dog poop, Boerum Hill.
  
• Daily News reporter (yes, he's back) Chris Rovzar went to Spain to write about gay marriage, and we didn't even get a lousy T-shirt. [The Advocate]
  
• Everything you always wanted to know about how Kiefer Sutherland set a Jack Bauer doll on fire. [Court TV]
  
• Creepy Orville Redenbacher, now for your viewing enjoyment. [AdAge]

Both Chris and Jo have agreed to stay with the column until adequate replacements are found (a job listing should be going up on Mediabistro later this afternoon); for their sake, hopefully the search will go a bit more smoothly than that of Page Six.

Meanwhile, we've heard Lloyd Grove's fluffer, Katherine Thomson, has been spotted conspicuously photocopying her clips. Which could be the sign of a mass underling exodus, or just a really lame scrapbook project. Lloyd does love his scrapbooking club!

My new assistant will be Katherine Thomson, a Princeton grad who has been toiling at MSNBC as a producer for Joe Scarborough. I am very excited to have Katherine working on Lowdown, and I look forward to great dish from her. She starts Jan. 2.

Next, the mostly unsubstantiated, largely speculative, and therefore much more fun news. An anonymous source who has spent some time recently in the News newsroom emails:

I just read your article on David Hauslaib, though it sounds like you didn't hear — he and Ben Widdicome aren't together anymore. Not sure when they broke it off.... Even more interesting: David was apparently talking to Colleen Curtis [News ME/features, who recently left for GMA] about doing some gossip something or other for them before she quit. Not sure if anything came of it but now all of a sudden he quits his job at Jossip.com? Sounds suspicous to me.... Oh, and then there's Lloyd and Hud. From the impression I got, Lloyd is quite happy to see him go. They had this weird glaring thing going on, not sure what it was about but that's how I saw it when I was there.

Finally, we're told that Newsers have spent the last two weeks congratulating Chris Rovzar, the Rush & Molloy legman, on his new gig at Men's Vogue. Of course, it's Hud Morgan, his Lowdown counterpart, who's moving to 4 Times Square. Now, we understand that both are tall, skinny, and impossibly Waspy, and we also understand that they're both a good decade or two younger than nearly all their colleagues. But, still, they're not that hard to tell apart. Chris is blonder. And gayer.

And Hud's the one glaring at Lloyd Grove, apparently.

Daily Dish [NYDN]