New York's biggest gossip source is just an average schmo from Jersey

There's a good chance you've never heard of self-professed "international celebrity journalist" Chaunce Hayden. There's an even better chance you've never heard of Steppin' Out, the free New Jersey–based gossip weekly he edits that is distributed in strip malls, diners, movie theaters, street boxes, and fine drinking establishments throughout the Garden State. But if you've read Page Six or any of the gossip columns that have run in the NY Daily News over the past decade, you've definitely seen Hayden's imprint: According to LexisNexis, the tattooed 49-year-old has provided the two tabloids with a combined 262 items since 1995—more than any other single source.

That track record, however, is now in jeopardy: Earlier this month, Hayden was banned from contributing items to Page Six for being the source of a false item about a sex tape starring Jackass player Bam Margera and Lynsi Smigo, the fiancée of jackass radio shock jock Gregg Hughes, aka "Opie." The details, predictably, are murky. Hayden claims he simply told Page Six reporter Bill Hoffman that he'd heard a tape may have been made, and says he was shocked that the item ran the next day without anyone at the paper authenticating its existence. Page Six editor Richard Johnson was eventually forced to issue a retraction after it became apparent there was no tape, though he placed the blame squarely on Hayden and vowed to never use him as a source again.

Now Smigo has filed a $10 million defamation suit against Johnson, the Post, and Hayden, in which she claims that Hayden is culpable because he mentioned the tape in a column in Steppin' Out that ran a week after the Post broke the story. (For the record, Hayden indeed mentioned the tape, but only to say he doesn't think it exists. He did, however, anoint Opie "Asshole of the Week," which probably didn't go over well. He also claims he's talking to a lawyer sometime next week about countersuing Smigo and Opie, so don't expect this thing to go away anytime soon.)

"This is the type of shit that makes me really hate this job," Hayden told us recently over drinks at the Thompson Hotel in SoHo. "The people in this business are the worst people in the world. I can't stand them one bit. Everyone's such a sleazebag."