Archive: Trades

Osborne's TV credits begin in 1954, but in 1977 he took up writing for the Hollywood Reporter and became the genial first host of TCM movies.

The creative director and editor who brought The Hollywood Reporter back from the brink is moving to the parent company.

Michael Cieply, the longtime anchor of New York Times Hollywood coverage in the Los Angeles bureau, is joining Deadline as the executive editor.

The Wrap says that newsroom gossip is true about a strip club expense account, a free trip and more.

Clearing the desk of media moves, observations and other items.

Henry Chu is the trade's new European Bureau Chief. He took the LAT buyout last fall.

Larry Mantle on his friend Steve Julian. New post for Nicco Mele. The Broad gets a category on tonight's "Jeopardy." And a lot more.

Longtime TV reporter Scott Collins will be TV editor, and Michael Schneider joins Penske Media. Plus more.

Joe Bel Bruno jumps from the LAT's Company Town team to lead breaking news coverage at the Hollywood Reporter.

Variety's chief film critic is moving to Amazon Studios as an acquisitions and development executive.

The Emmy Award nominations will no longer be held at a ridiculous hour of the morning in Los Angeles (well, North Hollywood.)

THR's National Magazine Award comes in the category of special interest. Pacific Standard and Amanda Hess also win.

Variety sped up an announcement of Rainey's hiring tonight after I called him seeking comment. Orr is leaving for Colorado and a startup.

The Variety logo that used to shine from the tallest office tower on the Wilshire Miracle Mile is now on the facade of a non-descript mid-rise on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Los Angeles.

Daily News leadership, a new photo of and a threat directed at Nikki Finke, Heather Havrilesky's column moves, plus more.

Ressner began at the LA Weekly as a messenger, moved to the Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone and US Weekly, then was a Time magazine correspondent in Los Angeles for more than 10 years. He also wrote for Politico.

Anne Thompson helps give some perspective to the latest back and forth between the Hollywood blogger and her former colleagues.

This perhaps bears repeating: The Hollywood Reporter is up for a general excellence award in the most prestigious magazine competition in the country. So is Pacific Standard.

Perhaps THR should have chosen a little different wording for one of the click-bait links in its story on today's PCH brush fire in Pacific Palisades.

Lindgren will relocate to Los Angeles for three months to oversee The Hollywood Reporter as acting editor while Janice Min and other key editors are working on a remake of Billboard.

Jean Smart portrays Finke as a secret blogger whose true identity is unknown to her family. Good line: "Mom, you're on the Internet."

The LA Press Club handed out the prizes it calls the National Entertainment Journalism Awards last night. Here are the winners.

Patrick Goldstein, the longtime Hollywood watcher for the LA Times and others, has a good feature piece in Los Angeles Magazine on the current state of the four main movie biz trades. One of the best parts is the disclosure of his professional entanglements with the players.

Key staffers hired by Finke will carry on Deadline.com. Finke calls it "a great day" and says she is free to start a new career at a new website.

Nikki Finke is "miscast as the victim in this drama," Deadline's senior actual adult, Hollywood trades veteran Michael Fleming, writes in a post on what used to be her site. He refutes several of her core claims and says "Nikki" has turned a personal feud with buyer Jay Penske into "a public spectacle."

I guess this is what happens when you sell your website to a guy with money, then challenge him openly.

On her Twitter feed, Nikki Finke has been posting in the past hour on what sounds like the beginning of a final break from Jay Penske, the investor who bought her Deadline.com some years back.

"One of the most noble things Jay Penske could ever do would be to give me back Deadline," Nikki Finke says in an interview with the WSJ's Ben Fritz. Plus: Finke notes still no correction by Sharon Waxman.

Russ Stanton, the VP for content at KPCC (and former editor in chief of the Los Angeles Times) had an email exchange with The Wrap reporter Sara Morrison over her recent story about the station. He takes a few shots at the site and offers Morrison some unsolicited career advice. She sticks to her guns.

Nikki Finke certainly doesn't sound fired. Today she announced the hiring of new television columnist Lisa De Moraes, who spent about 15 years covering TV at the Washington Post.

Mediabistro is calling it a hiatus but says that "within the next few weeks, all existing FishbowlLA content will be folded into the FishbowlNY archives." Current editor Richard Horgan will move over to FishbowlNY "to cover the Hollywood trades, awards season and a broad range of national media stories."

David Carr emailed Nikki Finke, took 15 minutes of verbal abuse, then tried to get to the truth of her future with Deadline. Last week's story in The Wrap, says Carr, "did not turn out to be true. [Sharon] Waxman, perhaps driven by wish fulfillment, wrote beyond the facts at hand." Waxman disagrees.

Finke posts a response in which she neither confirms nor denies that she has been "fired" from her own Deadline Hollywood by owner Jay Penske, as Sharon Waxman reported Sunday at The Wrap. "I am not going to discuss my Deadline Hollywood contract or my relationship with my boss Jay Penske," says Finke. "Why? Because I don’t have to."

The Wrap reports that Jay Penske has fired Finke. Penske's flack says it's not true. But the truth is less black and white...there is a contract negotiation involved...and Finke has reportedly been telling people she is looking to get out.

Stacey Farish, publisher of The Wrap since November of 2011, has jumped to Deadline's print magazine, Awardsline. She also becomes vice president of PMC Entertainment. Score one for Nikki Finke.

Executive editor Lisa Fung is the second former Los Angeles Times hand to leave the editing ranks of The Wrap in the past month. Also, Jeff Sneider of Variety re-joins The Wrap as a film reporter.

The last daily issue of Variety hits mailboxes Tuesday — be sure and grab a copy to save if you are into that. For the next generation Variety, the news today is that Scott Foundas joins the trade as chief film critic. He will stay in New York.

The Deadline.com team broke the news last night that parent company PMC is moving Variety out of its Miracle Mile office tower, and the Deadliners out of wherever they sit, and throwing them together in a building on Santa Monica Boulevard beside the 405 freeway. Nikki Finke and the Variety staffers she regularly insults together?

Fifteen months ago, the new deputy managing editor of The Wrap dismissed the site as "a small blog" filled with "opinion, agenda and fantasy" and "hardly a beacon of journalistic excellence." Editor Sharon Waxman was similarly dissed. All is forgiven, apparently.

Nikki Finke's post this morning at Deadline on the changes at Variety almost dripped ice water, especially when she flat-out accused the boss she shares with Variety, Jay Penske, of lying to her. Never mind: sometime during the day, the phrase "Penske lied to me" disappeared.

Nice farewell note to the Los Angeles Times newsroom from Claudia Eller, the entertainment news editor and veteran of the Hollywood scoop wars who was announced today as one of three new co-editors who will run Variety. She opens with praise for her current editor, John Corrigan, and confirms the Times counter-offered.

The other shoe fell today in the evolution of Hollywood trade Variety under new owner Jay Penske. One of the new co-editors is Claudia Eller, a 20-year veteran of movie coverage at the LA Times. Nikki Finke says Penske lied to her.

The story fingers the late THR owner Billy Wilkerson, starting in 1946, as the force behind the industry's high-level collusion to exclude leftists real and suspected from working. The package includes an apology from a son of Wilkerson.

The Hollywood Reporter won six first-place awards at tonight's National Entertainment Journalism Awards put on at the Biltmore by the Los Angeles Press Club. Kim Masters of THR (and KCRW's "The Business") won entertainment journalist of the year, and THR also won for best entertainment publication and best website.

The first round of reductions at Variety under new owner Jay Penske was announced in a 1:40 p.m., unbylined post at sister site Deadline.com. A "Dear Team" memo from Jay Penske says "without a doubt, this is a challenging day." No editors or reporters got the axe.

"Please be advised that PMC employees, including but not limited to Nikki Finke, Mike Fleming, Pete Hammond and Nellie Andreeva, are under long term employment contracts," says the lawyer letter.

More on sale of Variety, Sunday magazine next for Register, books from Roman Polanski's sex victim way back then and on LA's hardcore music scene, some media job notes and Dean Singleton speaks. Plus more.

In reporting that his employer has now acquired his former journalism home at Variety, Deadline film editor Michael Fleming took a moment for some personal words. Plus: The Wrap claims Finke 'having a major tantrum.'

Amid talk that the owner of Deadline.com is on the verge of buying Variety, Nikki Finke announced on Deadline.com that her staff will be too busy next week on some unstated business to post breaking news nuggets.

Jon Thurber, who left the Los Angeles Times recently after 40 years or so in the newsroom, is joining The Wrap as a senior editor. He will be reunited there with Lisa Fung, the executive editor. They were colleagues in the Calendar section at the Times for some years.

So far in this Emmy campaign season, writes Variety's Jon Weisman, "it would be hard to top this Padma Lakshmi/Bravo page for most distinctive 'For Your Consideration' ad." See her ad bigger

The Hollywood Reporter includes in its May 4 issue a 20-page special report on politics that "examines the complicated relationship between Hollywood and politics." It leads with a profile by contributing editor Tina Daunt of Obama fundraisers and power couple Ted Sarandos, the chief of content for Netflix, and Nicole Avant, the president's former ambassador to The Bahamas. "Sarandos is the man everyone in Hollywood wants a meeting with," says the trade. Included is what THR is calling "a guide to 20 of the biggest political players in Hollywood, including George Clooney, J.J. Abrams, Haim Saban and Ron Meyer."

David Poland of Movie City News takes off from the news that Variety is for sale to put in a bit of jaded perspective the four media outlets he says function as the closest thing Hollywood has to trade publications.

"I have every confidence that under new ownership, Variety will continue to thrive, innovate and provide fantastic insight into the sector," says Variety President Neil Stiles.

Interesting remarks by Hollywood Reporter editorial director Janice Min at Mediabistro via Fishbowl LA.

Clearly, top Hollywood executives feel burned that President Obama has stopped backing their very controversial pet measures to fight content piracy. But enough to drop their support? Two views from Hollywood websites.

Read Nikki Finke's note to Variety executives, including this line: "When is Variety going to stop stealing Deadline's scoops without any credit?"

Nikki Finke's Hollywood news site has been slapped with Google's dreaded (and often overheated) "attack site" designation.

Finke says she's gone until October, then blasts rival Sharon Waxman.

To go with her first story this week in the print Hollywood Reporter, former City Hall reporter Tina Daunt has also joined the staff as the trade's contributing editor for politics.

The Wrap saucily offers to let THR use its website code.

Federal suit by Penske Media Corporation alleges copyright infringement and more.

Nikki Finke watchers are having a fun time with this morning's news that she's flacking a Hollywood-themed Facebook game with Paramount Digital Entertainment.

Sharon Waxman of The Wrap calls out The Hollywood Reporter under Janice Min for lifting scoops and calling them "exclusives."

In the small world of the Hollywood trades, Tuesday began with the former L.A. Times advertising exec Lynne Segall quitting MMC to become publisher and senior VP of The Hollywood Reporter. Then Nikki Finke posted a 1,300 word screed against Segall.

Variety columnist Brian Lowry has a bad reaction to Sunday's Calendar story in the L.A. Times about the current cycle of action heroes in films being more impressively muscled than in previous rounds.

Entertainment blogger Nikki Finke may be on medical leave, but a post she put up — then took down — has prompted renewed talk of "Crazy Nikki" and "Hollywood’s leading internet terrorist."

David Lieberman, senior media reporter at USA Today, will join Deadline.com as Executive Editor on April 11.

Nikki Finke alleges at Deadline Hollywood that The Hollywood Reporter "deleted embarrassing information about Summit Entertainment principals from a financial story about the studio's refinancing in order to 'horse-trade' it for the cover story interview with Jodie Foster that appears in this week's print edition.

Andrew Wallenstein moves from paidContent to be television editor at Variety.

Fields dismisses cease and desist letter and says that Nikki Finke and company have engaged in trade libel and unfair competition.

Nikki Finke says that the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences this morning pulled her film editor Mike Fleming's backstage press credential to cover Sunday's Oscars, citing Deadline's reporting of spoilers about the show.

Reacting apparently to Nikki Finke posting details of Sunday's Oscar telecast, Hollywood blogger David Poland has posted a "Crazy Nikki" rant that's aggressive even for him — and also says that motion picture academy president Tom Sherak should be fired "if he continues to feed her any information."

There are spoilers galore in Nikki Finke's report on what will be in the Oscars show on Sunday, so tread carefully if that matters to you.

An NBC source says that "Today" will do a pre-Oscars piece about (or with?) Deadline's Nikki Finke in the 7:30 a.m. half-hour on Friday's show.

Deadline's Nikki Finke has publicly called out The Wrap for taking her content, and reports that a "cease-and-desist" letter was sent from her corporate overseer to Sharon Waxman and her board of directors

Variety has openings for paid spring and summer interns.

She says it's not her, and The Daily doesn't sound all that convinced, but they run it anyway.

Michael Speier is no longer Nikki Finke's managing editor at Deadline, just three months after he hired on to much Finkeian fanfare. But he hasn't completely left either, she emails.

Dana Harris has been at Variety for nearly 11 years.

Leo Wolinskly, the former Los Angeles Times executive editor who joined Daily Variety as editor late last last year, has been let go.

After Michael Speier was laid off last year as executive editor of Daily Variety, he served a stint as news editor for Sharon Waxman at The Wrap. Now he's joining Waxman's arch-rival Nikki Finke in the new position of managing editor at Deadline.

Janice Min's Hollywood Reporter will switch to a weekly magazine next next month, the New York Times says. "A mix of analytical and feature articles and photo spreads, will be...

Janice Min's arrival at the Hollywood Reporter has left the trade's previous staffers feeling shut out, Sharon Waxman says.

The first press release has come in from Janice Min's new Hollywood Reporter.

"(500) Days of Summer" re-envisioned as a thriller.

Former Us Weekly editor Janice Min has been named the editorial director of The Hollywood Reporter, says Huffington Post media editor Danny Shea on Twitter.

Variety Editor Tim Gray has been telling studio PR types that if they give casting scoops to the online competition, the paper won't run their big announcement stories in print. Plus: Nikki Finke for sale again?

The New York Times sets up a piece examining the future of Variety and The Hollywood Reporter by saying the "feisty tradition of entertainment trade reporting and criticism...has been so severely tested in recent weeks that some wonder whether the entire era is drawing to a close."

Plus ex-Hollywood Reporter publisher Robert Dowling on what ails the trades.

The Wrap's Sharon Waxman says The Hollywood Reporter "and several other Nielsen entertainment titles are set to be sold to James Finkelstein’s News Communications Inc., owner of 'Who’s Who' publications...