The Erin Andrews peephole debacle has now turned into a feud between Andrews’ employer ESPN and The New York Post. After the Post published photos of from the illicit tape of Andrews (including one on it’s Tuesday page one, at left) the sports network banned the Post‘s reporters from any of its outlets.

Then today — perhaps in a defiance of ESPN’s ban — the Post‘s gossip column Page Six ran an item blaming the network for outing Andrews as the subject of the fuzzy peephole camera tape. According to Page Six, the video had been posted online since Feburary but “had gone largely unnoticed.”

“No one would have known that a sick voyeur had secretly videotaped ESPN reporter Erin Andrews nude in her hotel room, if the Mickey Mouse sports network hadn’t sent a letter to an obscure Web site demanding that it take down its link to a fuzzy video of an unidentified blonde,” the P6 item reads.

Could this be a declaration of war between ESPN and the Post?

Meanwhile, there is no word on whether ESPN will be similarly punishing other news organizations, like FOX News and CBS, that published or broadcast stills or parts of the video. Publicists at ESPN have not yet returned our request for comment.

Earlier: Erin Andrews Scandal Continues To Make News

New York Observer: Newsweek‘s recent redesign has yet to improve newsstand sales. Sales for the first six weeks after May’s revamp were flat compared to the previous 18 issues in 2009, and the following four weeks showed a pretty steep decline. Is this a reflection of readers’ summer buying habits, lack of interest or a rejection of the magazine’s new look?

Page Six: Is US Weekly editor Janice Min ready to pack in her million-dollar-plus pay check and head to greener pastures? One source told Page Six, “She’s had enough,” and she’s reportedly taking meetings with TV execs while vacationing in Los Angeles.

AdAge: A preview of ad page numbers for September issues, with magazines like Elle and Essence predicting declines, although they say they’ll be down less than they were in March. In other news, who is ready for Vogue doc, “The September Issue”?

The Daily Advance: Newspaper publisher Cox Enterprises has sold a few more newspapers, this time from North Carolina: The Daily Advance, The Daily Reflector of Greenville, The Rocky Mount Telegram and 10 other non-dailies based in Eastern N.C.

Time: BusinessWeek‘s sale raises many questions, including whether there is a future for business journalism.

Yesterday, Gawker got the scoop that former FishbowlNY editor and Mediabistro.com managing editor Dylan Stableford had been laid off from his current post at Folio magazine.

Stableford left FBNY in August 2007 to return to Connecticut-based Folio where he had previously served as senior editor. We have reached out to Stableford, but haven’t heard from him yet. However, a source at Red 7 Media, which publishes Folio and the companion Web site, told FBNY that Stableford was laid off yesterday two weeks ago along with three other people from various departments at the company. Folio is published monthly and its site reports more urgent, breaking news, to which Stableford contributed very frequently. With his well-sourced reporting and insight gone from the site, what will be left to read?

News of Stableford’s job loss was followed by a report that Page Six gossip maven Paula Froelich has resigned from her post as Richard Johnson‘s right hand woman. Froelich is presumably ditching her day job to work on bigger projects, like books. She is now a bonafide author, after her first novel, “Mercury in Retrograde,” debuted last month and quickly reached the New York Times bestseller list. And, she is rumored to have landed a deal with MTV to develop a show based on her upcoming young adult novel “Grits.”

We want to wish best of luck to these two talented, hard-working journalists. We’re sure they will both move on to bigger and better things.

Last night, we hit the ritzy party celebrating the launch of Page Six deputy editor Paula Froelich‘s first novel, “Mercury in Retrograde.” The party, hosted by Estee Lauder exec John Demsey in his sprawling Upper East Side townhouse, was filled with Froelich’s friends like Cosmopolitan editor Kate White, “Today” show host Hoda Kotb, actress Katrina Bowden from “30 Rock,” former Fishbowlers Rachel Sklar and Glynnis MacNicol and Froelich’s latest Page Six co-worker Neel Shah. We offered Paula congratulations amid the free-flowing rose and bacon and peanut butter hors d’ouevres but caught up with her today via email to get some insight on “Mercury.”

“I wrote a novel because — well, I’ve always been a good story teller and thought, if I can write the way I talk: it’ll be amazing!” she told FishbowlNY. “I just wanted to write about women in general.”

Read on for more insight on “Mercury” from the author

Read more

We confess we’re not very good guessing blind items. But if you are, you may want to have a go at Page Six deputy editor Paula Froelich‘s inventive way to promote her new novel, “Mercury In Retrograde.”

Froelich is challenging readers to guess who inspired 10 characters from her book with the winner receiving a signed copy of the book and an invite to one of two book parties.

It may sound easy for people in the know, but this challenge might turn out to be harder than expected. Explains Froelich:

“I have not included any of my current colleagues (as I’d like to keep my job, thank you very much), nor are they all based solely on one person. In fact, most are an amalgam. The characters may not be based on people in the field in which they are described.”

For what its worth, we think this one will be the easiest to guess: “Kitty Foil, a teen starlet who accuses one of the main characters of ‘box-blocking’ her with a film director at the Met gala. A 17-year-old actress who’d been raised in the Disney farm leagues, Kitty brags about losing her virginity to Mick on a tour bus, keeps running to the bathroom to “powder her nose,” gets very drunk and ends up doing improbable yogic positions in rollerblades before wreaking havoc on the gala.”

Any guesses? Leave them below or go tell Paula. Winners will be picked Monday. We’ll keep you posted.

Next time they should send the National Enquirer! Turns out that story Page Six ran last week (it’s since been removed) about Michelle Obama ordering caviar and lobster to her Waldorf Astoria room wasn’t true at all! Says Page Six‘s retraction in today’s paper:

The source who told us last week about Michelle Obama getting lobster and caviar delivered to her room at the Waldorf-Astoria must have been under the influence of a mind-altering drug. She was not even staying at the Waldorf. We regret the mistake, and our former source is going to regret it, too. Bread and water would be too good for such disinformation.

Fair enough. How Rush Limbaugh will counter his charges of “hypocrisy” is another story. Also, you probably won’t be surprised to hear that some astute blogger felt that the non-existent lobster and caviar order was further proof of Obama consorting with (non-existent) terrorists.

Two different stories are floating around the very fishbowl-like world of New York media today (hey we didn’t just pluck our name from a hat). First off, Radar is reporting that Gawker may finally have found the managing editor they’ve been looking for in Gabriel Snyder, formerly of the New York Observer and most recently at Variety. Gawker-head Nick Denton put out word last month that he was looking for a replacement, though Gawker was unable to confirm the pick when we contacted them earlier.

Meanwhile, a tipster tells us that Radar scribe (and former Gawker intern) Neel Shah may have been tapped to fill the vacancy over at Page Six, a position Defamer’s Molly Friedman was also rumored to have been up for. Radar was unable to confirm. Stay-tuned!

This is just plain weird. Page Six is reporting that Tyra Banks, a successful media mogul (or close to) in her own right is dressing up as Michelle Obama for the cover of next month’s Harper’s Bazaar. One wonders, is this because Bazaar was unable to get the real thing, or because Banks wants to take America’s Top Model to its most extreme conclusion. Whatever the reason it strikes us as the kind of weird plot point Hitchcock might have dreamed up were he alive and making a film about the modern day media world.