Nikki Finke, former debutante turned reporter and editor, has become the blogger movie industry insiders have to read even when it hurts.
She’s “a must-click look into the ragingly insecure id of Hollywood,” wrote David Carr of The New York Times, in a story that describes how Finke has found a home on the Internet with her blog, Deadline Hollywood Daily.
“Her liabilities in the world of print - a penchant for innuendo and unnamed sources - became assets online,” Carr wrote.
“To admirers and detractors, she is the perfect expression of the Web’s original premise, which suggested that a lone obsessive could own the conversation.”
Add to this a multitude of sources and a zingy style that takes no prisoners, and it’s no surprise that Finke has become an online millionaire.
Last month, she sold her website to Mail.com Media Corp. in a deal that Carr reported will make her $5 million and maybe more in the next eight years.
In announcing the sale, Finke said she would continue to have “complete control” of the site.
Finke, 55, grew up on Long Island, attending private elementary and high schools. In 1971, she made her debut at the International Debutante Ball held at New York City’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
She graduated from Wellesley College, where she was editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, and then worked as a staff assistant in the congressional office of then Rep. Edward I. Koch, the future mayor of New York.
In 1974, Finke was engaged to Jeffrey W. Greenberg, the son of Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, the then president of American International Group, the insurance giant. Married in 1980, the couple divorced in 1982.
Finke left Koch’s office for journalism, starting with the Associated Press, where she eventually became a correspondent in Moscow and in London.
Among other jobs, she has been a reporter for Newsweek in Washington and a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times.
She briefly served as West Coast editor of the New York Post before she was fired early in 2002.
Finke then sued the Post and the Walt Disney Company for $10 million, alleging that she was fired after Disney executives libeled her to Post editors. The suit was ultimately settled out of court.
In 2002, Finke became “Deadline Hollywood” correspondent for LA Weekly, an alternative newspaper. In 2006, she launched Deadline Hollywood Daily on a site hosted by the newspaper.
A year later, the blog became a vital source of news and opinion during the Hollywood writers strike. Finke worked around the clock, getting stories the mainstream media missed.
“It’s been brutal,” she told The New York Times, “but it’s also been exhilarating because I love news. I love it - a scoop is better than sex.”
Finke’s scoops are most often not about Hollywood’s on-camera stars. Rather, she delights in industry news, news she delivers with a twist of the knife if it involves anyone she loathes.
“I don’t bully and terrify people,” she told Carr. “I’m not mean, I just write mean.”
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