Movies

Veteran journalist and Deadline founder was 68 – The Hollywood Reporter

October 9, 2022

Nikki Finke, the polarizing entertainment journalist who founded the website Deadline and wielded immense power by focusing an acerbic and relentless lens on Hollywood, has died. She was 68 years old.

Finke died Sunday morning in Boca Raton, Fla., after a “prolonged illness,” a family spokesperson said. The Hollywood Reporter.

To THE weeklyFinke led his Hollywood Daily Deadline 2002-09 column. In 2006, she launched Hollywood Daily Deadlinea 24-hour online version, and became a key source of information on the 2007 WGA Strike.

This year, The New York Times‘ Brian Stelter wrote that Finke’s blog had “become a critical forum for Hollywood news and gossip, known for analyzing (in sometimes insulting terms) the behind-the-scenes maneuverings of tycoons”, his reporting on the strike ultimately bolstering “his position”. as a Hollywood power broker.

Finke landed scoops with a cutthroat style that both impressed and infuriated members of the industry. The late Brad Grey, then chief executive of Paramount, told the Time one year after the Deadline blog launched that even with its opposite style of reporting, its scope had to be respected. “Like it or not,” he said, “everybody in Hollywood reads it.”

In 2008, She the magazine named her one of its 25 most influential women in Hollywood, and two years later she was ranked 79th on Forbes’ list of “the most powerful women in the world”.

Finke sold Deadline at Mail.com Media Corp. – the Jay Penske company now known as Penske Media Corp. – in 2009, a deal that would see her continue as its editor-in-chief. She took a cut of the site’s advertising revenue.

But in 2013, she left Deadline after editorial clashes with Penske.

“At her best, Nikki Finke embodied the spirit of journalism and was never afraid to speak the hard truths with an incisive style and an enigmatic spark. She was brash and real,” Penske, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Penske Media , which also has THR, said in a statement on Sunday. “It was never easy with Nikki, but she will always be one of the most memorable people in my life.”

In 2014, she launched another media venture, NikkiFinke.com, and then a year later HollywoodDementia.com, a website that published short fiction about the business written by Finke and others.

“There is a lot of truth in fiction,” she told the Time of this effort. “There are things I’m going to be able to say in fiction that I can’t say in journalism right now.”

Finke almost became the subject of Hollywood fiction herself, but in 2011 HBO passed on the pilot for Tilda, a series based on a Finke-like blogger that was to star Diane Keaton. The Pilot, written by Bill Condon and Tell me that You Love Me Creator Cynthia Mort without Finke’s involvement or knowledge, also featured Elliot Page and Jason Patric.

Born in 1953, Finke grew up in Sands Point on Long Island before graduating from Wellesley College. Early in her career, she worked at the Associated Press, where she covered politics and worked in the Foreign Office, The Dallas Morning News, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times and The New York Observerwhere she covered entertainment as the weekly’s West Coast editor.

To DeadlineFinke was also known for her sarcastic live blogs about award shows and was among the first to report on the 24-hour weekend box office.

She was rarely photographed, with a website once offering money to anyone who could get a picture of her.

Speaking of his legacy and that of Deadline‘s in a post for the publication’s 10th anniversary, she wrote that the concept behind her original blog – using a URL purchased for “14 bucks and change” – was to deliver breaking news faster than she could. could with his chronicle.

“I didn’t mean to be a troublemaker,” she wrote. “Or an internet journalist who created something from scratch that put the Hollywood trades back on their heels, and today, under the ownership of Penske Media, is a website worth over $100 millions of dollars. Or a woman with brass balls, an attitude and a ruthless hustle who spoke hard truths about the bumps and accurately reported the scoops first.

Finke also wrote for The New York Times, vanity lounge, Squire, Harper’s Bazaar, She, The Washington Post, Salon.com, First and Angels magazine during his career.

She married Jeffrey W. Greenberg after a years-long engagement in 1980, but they divorced in 1982. She is survived by her sister, Terry Finke Dreyfus, brother-in-law James, and nieces Sarah Greenhill and Diana Leighton. Memorial services will be private.