Veteran journalist Nikki Finke, who founded the entertainment trade site Deadline and who in her heyday was an elbows-out columnist serving up juicy industry scoops and skewering Hollywood’s elite, has died at age 68, reports The L-A Times.
According to a family representative, Finke died Sunday morning in Boca Raton, Fla., after a prolonged illness.
Finke was revered and feared in the industry for exposing secrets, first through her LA Weekly column, Deadline Hollywood, which she eventually built into a website. She founded Deadline Hollywood Daily in 2006 on a Friday and quickly began building her audience with a snark-filled live-blog of the 78th Academy Awards the following Sunday. The site was largely a one-woman operation until 2009, when the Penske Media Corp. acquired it and hired Finke as editor in chief.
Her legacy is a form of entertainment news tailored for the internet versus the printed page, with an emphasis on being first, landing exclusives, relentlessly promoting the work and cutting through the noise of a crowded media landscape with a loud, opinionated and often mean voice — one that many equated to that of a bully. She was, a 2011 Times piece said, the “most feared writer” in Hollywood.
“I didn’t set out to be a disruptor,” Finke wrote in a 2016 column reflecting on Deadline’s 10th anniversary. “Or an internet journalist who created something out of nothing that put the Hollywood trades back on their heels, and today, under Penske Media ownership, is a website worth $100+ million. Or a woman with brass balls, f— you attitude and ruthless hustle, who told hard truths about the moguls and who accurately reported scoops first.
“I did recognize that showbiz coverage could change, because the digital platform leveled a playing field that had previously belonged to Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. Back then, the trades were slow to embrace the idea that trees no longer had to die for a media outlet to be influential.”
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