In exchange for anonymity, the source offered up a juicy document to be handed to a journalist at a secret meeting. It would cast a powerful official in the administration into the center of a scandal, and lead to at least one resignation.

The object of the leak: Pasquale Orsini, principal of Bloomfield High School in Bloomfield, N.J.

The document in question was Mr. Orsini's yearbook letter to students, which was riddled with grammatical errors. The journalist marked up the mistakes and posted a copy on her Web site, baristanet.com, under the mocking title "Deer Graduette." Parents instantly complained about Mr. Orsini, and the district superintendent called him to demand an explanation. Ultimately, Mr. Orsini was cleared -- the errors were blamed on a typist -- and an editor at the yearbook stepped down. The leaker was never identified, but the damage was done: "It was representing the school and me, and it was incorrect," Mr. Orsini says.

Whatever happened to keeping a lid on it? These days, you don't have to be a CIA agent to have your personal life upturned by a tipster with an agenda. Would-be "Scooter" Libbys are proliferating everywhere from the executive suite to the playground, as the Internet and changing mores open the spigots for secret-sharing. Talk radio and reality television have made it acceptable to turn private lives into public theater, and the explosion of blogs is giving nobodies the means to write about everybody. Not to be outdone, new celebrity magazines are scrambling for scraps and lowering the bar for who and what is worth exposing. In a year that even Deep Throat decided to go public, it's becoming fashionable -- or at least not frowned upon -- to be an anonymous source for just about anything.

Some reporters say officials may be clamming up, at least for the short term, in the wake of the Valerie Plame-name leak that kicked off a federal investigation. But throughout the U.S., it seems that everyone with a factoid at their fingertips can't help but pass it on.

Just this week, sports blogs posted anonymously submitted photos of University of Southern California quarterback Matt Leinart at a nightclub; the submitter says Mr. Leinart was "drunk" and "groped" a woman. (Mr. Leinart denies the story.) In Albuquerque, N.M., a new Web site about city affairs asks its 1,300 daily readers to submit inside information about soured real-estate deals and business failures. In East Lansing, Mich., the anonymous spreading of gossip by text- and instant messaging has become such a concern at schools that the city last month hosted its first-ever Forum on Cyberbullying. Readers of Reliablebuildersinmaine.com, an online diary and bulletin board, have an open invitation to dish anonymously about their contractors. A welcoming message reads, "This is the place to name names."

To some observers, the race to reveal private information to the media, any media, underscores a general downgrading of the value of discretion. Whereas a sense of propriety used to keep some topics off limits, leakers now say it's easy -- and often fun -- to get caught up in the rumor-mongering that pervades everything from TV shows such as "Desperate Housewives" to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play "Doubt," in which a priest suffers the consequences of passed-on innuendo. "There is this sort of national inclination, not only in the political arena, to want to say, 'I know something you don't know,' " says Peter Post, director of the Emily Post Institute, a company that promotes etiquette. (Mr. Post is also a great-grandson of the institute's namesake.)

What's more, a wave of press scandals has tarred and demystified traditional media, and the interactivity of the Internet has encouraged a bond between readers and news gatherers. As a result, more people feel emboldened to reach out to reporters. In the realm of celebrity magazines, Janice Min, editor in chief of Us Weekly, says that as recently as last year the magazine received only occasional outside tips. Now, at least two people a week submit tidbits. "It's not an intimidating arena anymore," she says.

Norm Clarke, a columnist with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, says he gets 50 anonymous tips a day -- five times as many as he received five years ago. Since the paper began publishing Mr. Clarke's email address and telephone number beneath his column, the journalist hears not just from publicists and business owners, but also strippers, valets, high rollers and average tourists, who feel compelled to blab about virtually anything they see. He's happy to have the help: About two years ago, he got a call from an anonymous source whose caller-ID showed a Nebraska area code, tipping him to Britney Spears's infamous 55-hour marriage. "We're in a participatory era where so many more people want to pass along their knowledge," he says.

More and more, though, it's not just celebrities whose lives are affected by tattling, but private citizens with little claim to (or desire for) fame. Teresa Kettelkamp works for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops overseeing programs dealing with sexual abuse. Her quiet life was upended in September after she wrote a memo to some bishops about speaking to children about sexual abuse.

First, someone anonymously leaked the memo to Domenico Bettinelli Jr., the editor of a Catholic magazine and Web site. Mr. Bettinelli posted excerpts of the memo, taking issue with her point of view -- and listing her cellphone number. One reader wrote in to Mr. Bettinelli's site, claiming that Ms. Kettelkamp, a former police colonel, was affiliated with a police organization that supports abortion rights. More than two months later, she's still receiving angry phone calls. A spokesman for Ms. Kettelkamp says the episode reflects "the price of doing business in our world today."

In September, Susan Dostie, a manufacturer of log homes in Sidney, Maine, was suddenly subjected to public criticism when her company was anonymously attacked on reliablebuildersinmaine.com. Someone using the pseudonym "Snowbloom" alleged that the company installed support piers for a deck improperly (the deck fell off the side of the house) and put in the floors upside down. "Dostie's gets away with negligence, faulty workmanship, and possibly fraudulent business practices," wrote Snowbloom, who revealed few personal details besides noting that "my husband is a minister."

Sean Joyce, an attorney for Dostie's Log Homes, says, "We do disagree with what is said there," adding that his client will "possibly" file a libel lawsuit against the minister and his wife as a result of the posting. Ms. Dostie declined to comment. Debra Shannon, co-founder of reliablebuildersinmaine.com, stands behind her posters: "If you tell your story, you're not being malicious," she says.

The hurdles are high for any lawsuit about leaks. A 1996 federal law gives all but virtual blanket protection to the hosts of Web chat rooms from libel lawsuits about information posted by users. Reporters and bloggers can claim First Amendment rights, even for untrue statements -- as long as they weren't negligent in posting the information -- so libel lawsuits against them are hard to win. Alternatively, if the published information is true, a person can still sue for invasion of privacy, but there too the bar is high. He or she would have to prove to a judge that the information was "highly offensive," "of no legitimate concern to the public" and widely disclosed. (The precise terms vary in some states.) Plus, in filing such a case, the leakee would have to be prepared for potential publicity surrounding the information they wanted kept private all along.

In the world of blogs, it may not even be worth it. Most operators of these Web sites don't have the deep pockets of typical print and broadcast media. "Lawyers might not expect to get that much money out of some teenage blogger," says Daniel Solove, an associate professor of law at George Washington University Law School.

Not all bloggers are broke, and a lawsuit in federal court in Washington, D.C., is being closely watched in part as a test of America's tolerance for potential invasion of privacy. Jessica Cutler, a former U.S. Senate staffer, took to the Web and anonymously (using the handle "Washingtonienne") wrote about her sexual relationships with six men, some of whom she identified by title or with initials or other personal details.

After a popular Washington blog, Wonkette, linked to Ms. Cutler's site, one of the men was identified as Robert Steinbuch, who at the time was a lawyer with the Senate Judiciary Committee. Mr. Steinbuch resigned and in May sued Ms. Cutler for invasion of privacy. Mr. Steinbuch's attorney, Jonathan S. Rosen, says "It's a Catch-22. The last thing we want is publicity." Ms. Cutler, who got a six-figure book deal out of the episode, defends the postings and says "there was nothing on the blog that I made up."

Gossip has always been a preferred vice of human beings -- and leaking has been central to American journalism since before the days of columnist Walter Winchell. But if you happen to leak the identity of someone who's undercover, it isn't chic, it's a crime. In the wake of the Valerie Plame case, where the disclosure of the identity of an undercover CIA agent came under scrutiny, some members of the media are reconsidering how to deal with leaks. Newspapers such as the New York Times have said they are tightening the use of anonymous sources and making an effort to explain in print why anonymity has been granted.

None of that is stopping Chantal Foster of Albuquerque, whose Web site Dukecityfix.com, founded in March, covers local issues. Six of Ms. Foster's 20 listed contributors write under false names, she says. Last month, somebody using the name Pika Brittlebush (a shrub native to the Southwest) posted a report about seeing a former county official at a sex shop. Though the contributor didn't name the official, the site linked to the man's personal Web site. Ms. Foster says she believes "anonymity leads to greater truth."

Popular, gossipy and often nasty Web sites such as Defamer and Gawker -- which last month attracted 4.5 million visits, according to Sitemeter.com, an online-traffic service -- have thrived in large part because of the network of leakers who send them media, political and entertainment dish. A study conducted earlier this fall by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 13 million U.S. adults had created blogs -- and that 39 million American adults classify themselves as blog readers, up 22 percent from the 32 million people who did so back in January.

The leakers are getting more sophisticated, says Chris Fehlinger, the founder of Bitterwaitress.com, a site on which restaurant staff post complaints about cheap customers. In the two years since he inaugurated a "tipper database" that claims to track the amount of money left on the table by celebrities (and demi-celebrities), he's amassed about 2,000 entries. At first, waiter-leakers would just cite the celebrity and the amount of the tip. More recently, leakers also will note the specific restaurant, city and particulars about the celebrity's clothes and companions. "People are a lot better at giving details," Mr. Fehlinger says. "It's almost like they've learned how."

One person who was singled out on the site was best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell. An anonymous posting claimed he failed to recognize a waiter who had served him many times, and that he routinely left a mere 10 percent gratuity. "Ouch," says Mr. Gladwell, "I could have sworn that I was reliably in the 15-to-20 percent range." As to failing to acknowledge the person serving him, Mr. Gladwell says he has "very poor eyesight and I rarely wear my glasses, and as a result I recognize almost no one."

Last month, a New York investment banker named Jason Lewis learned about leak chic the hard way, after he sent an email to a few friends, only to find it appearing all over the media. Mr. Lewis wrote in detail how he had tricked actress Lindsay Lohan into responding to his phone and BlackBerry messages. (He has the same name as a TV actor.) The email got repeatedly forwarded and appeared on blogs and in newspapers. The New York Daily News ran excerpts and also interviewed the actor Jason Lewis, quoting him as saying of the banker Mr. Lewis, "I think Jason Lewis is a creep." Contacted at his office, the banker Mr. Lewis says the email was private: "It was a funny story, and it was meant to be between a couple of friends."

Ms. Lohan's spokeswoman was unsympathetic. If Mr. Lewis thought something like this wouldn't be leaked, she said, "Well, he's an idiot."

Gossips-R-Us

For the rumor-monger who has everything? A tattle-themed gift. There are dozens of items, from books to T-shirts to posters that take off on the idea of leaking. Here are a handful of some recent entries on the market.

ITEM NAME: 'VeggieTales: Larry-Boy and the Rumor Weed' Big Idea VHS $9.99, DVD $14.99
DESCRIPTION: An animated story involving an asparagus stalk, carrot and cucumber that teaches kids not to gossip.
COMMENTS: Created by Big Idea, a Christian entertainment firm, this video/DVD has sold over two million copies since its 1999 release. It is one of the better-selling videos in the VeggieTales series.

ITEM NAME: Magnetic Headline Kit The Onion $7.99
DESCRIPTION: Magnets form headlines like "Tia Carrera's career 99 percent Claymation"
COMMENTS: Like magnet poetry, but edgier. Sold only online, the kit is one of satiric newspaper, The Onion's, perennial bestsellers, along with "You are dumb" mugs.

ITEM NAME: 'Quietly Judging You' T-shirt Gawker Media, $20
DESCRIPTION: White cotton T-shirt that reads "Yes, I am quietly judging you."
COMMENTS: The phrase reflects the snarky tone of Gawker, a popular gossip blog. The shirts were introduced in November.

ITEM NAME: 'I don't repeat gossip so listen carefully' refrigerator magnet Lolly Lu, $4.95
DESCRIPTION: Refrigerator magnet with colored image and quote. Also comes on cosmetic cases and beverage napkins.
COMMENTS: Owner plans to open a store devoted to gossip-related merchandise in Atlanta next year called "Lucy's: Gossip, Gifts & Glam." The tag line will be "Live like a celebrity."

ITEM NAME: 'Scandalous' Oni Press $9.95
DESCRIPTION: Graphic novel about two gossip columnists set in 1950s Hollywood.
COMMENTS: Released last year, "Scandalous" takes a dark turn and contains some swearing, so it is recommended for teens and older.

ITEM NAME: 'We're not gossiping/We're networking' tops Cafepress.com/retro--cafe $18.99-$37.99
DESCRIPTION: Cotton top with printed black & white silhouetted image and purple lettering.
COMMENTS: Invented six months ago after Ontario designer defended her gossiping tendencies to a friend. Also on mugs and buttons.
-- Christina S.N. Lewis