Nikki Finke, a tenacious journalist who revolutionized entertainment reportingwith what became the Hollywood trade website Deadline, died Sunday morning inBoca Raton, Fla. after a prolonged illness. she was 68.
Finke’s death was confirmed by Deadline. Jay Penske, founder, chairman and CEOof Penske Media Corporation, which acquired Finke’s blog in 2009, shared astatement honoring Finke.
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“At her best, Nikki Finke embodied the spirit of journalism, and was neverafraid to tell the hard truths with an incisive style and an enigmatic spark,”said Penske. “She was brash and true. It was never easy with Nikki, but shewill always remain one of the most memorable people in my life.”
After spending the beginning of her career reporting on everything from Moscow(for the Associated Press) to Washington, DC (for Newsweek), in 2002, Finkestarted a column for LA Weekly called Deadline Hollywood, which she tookonline in March 2006 as Deadline Hollywood Daily in an effort to better coverup-to-the-minute news. Rather than focus on celebrity or content, Finke placeda singularly unforgiving spotlight on the studio executives and high-poweredagents who make the industry run. She was unafraid to call out what shebelieved to be ill-conceived or substandard decision-making in the bluntestpossible terms, and her take-no-prisoners approach made her site a must-readin a media ecosystem Finke saw as excessively fawning and credulous.
Finke’s relentless coverage of the writers’ strike in 2007 and 2008 cementedDeadline Hollywood Daily as the central media organ of the industry. Herearly, innate understanding of the unsparingly fast and aggressive metabolismof digital journalism — she would post at all hours, update stories on the flyand occasionally even quietly change facts when her original scoops did notpan out — upended a century of dominance by traditional trade publications_variety_ and the Hollywood Reporter. Her stories would often start withFinke’s trademark “TOLDJA” screaming from the headline, a reminder to readersthat an official announcement or confirmation had first been reported by her.
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Although she often protested that she did leave her apartment, her total lackof a public presence in Hollywood — she never attending private screenings ormet her sources in person, and only two known photos of her exist — gave Finkethe aura of a mythical recluse who still managed to keep every top executiveon speed dial. In 2011, HBO even produced a half-hour comedy about Finkecalled “Tilda,” starring Diane Keaton as the pot-smoking journalist TildaWatski who covers Hollywood through her website the Daily Circus. It didn’tget past the pilot stage.
Finke grew up in “Great Gatsby” territory, on the North Shore of Long Islandin New York. She attended finishing school at Miss Hewitt’s Classes (latercalled the Hewitt School), and even made her debut at the InternationalDebutante Ball. After graduating from Wellesley College, she married in 1980and divorced two years later, pouring herself instead into a peripateticjournalism career. Along with the AP and Newsweek, she wrote for the LosAngeles Times, the New York Observer, New York magazine and the New York Post.When the Post fired her in 2002 following unflattering articles she wroteabout Disney’s litigation over Winnie the Pooh, she sued the Post, NewsCorporation and the Walt Disney Company for wrongful termination for $10million. The suit was reportedly settled.
That same year, Finke started her column at LA Weekly, built on over adecade’s worth of research she’d done for a book about Hollywood agents. Whilethe book was never published, it brought Finke inside a world that appearedboth to fascinate and repulse her in equal measure, and ignited herpugnacious, anti-authority instincts to speak brutal truth to power. At herheight, Finke was feared by most, loathed by some and impossible to ignore.She was unapologetic about how savage her copy could be. In 2006, she toldMarketWatch, “If there’s an open wound, I’m going to pour salt in it.” In2007, she told Elle, “All moguls are morons.” In 2009, she told the New YorkTimes, “I’m not mean, I just write mean,” the Los Angeles Times, “Sometimes,the truth hurts,” and the New Yorker, “I can’t help it! It’s like meannesspours out of my fingers!”
Those latter interviews came on the heels of Finke selling Deadline HollywoodDaily for a reported low seven-figure sum in June 2009 to Mail.com MediaCorporation — later Penske Media Corporation, which acquired variety in2012. Rechristened Deadline, the site, still managed by Finke, took on moreemployees, starting with veteran entertainment reporters Mike Fleming(covering film) and Nellie Andreeva (covering TV). What had been anuninhibited expression of Finke’s distinctive voice began to operate much morelike a traditional trade outlet.
Despite Deadline’s continued success, for Finke, the fit ultimately didn’twork. In November 2013, she parted ways with PMC, launching, and thenshuttering, her own entertainment news site, NikkiFinke.com, then pivoting in2015 to a site for short fiction about the industry called Hollywood Dementia,which last published in 2019. She returned to PMC as a consultant in 2017.
Finke’s final post on Deadline was in 2016, to celebrate the 10th anniversaryof the site. “It gives me great pleasure to see that, while Deadline is verydifferent from what I created, it’s thriving as an integral part of theentertainment establishment,” she wrote.
Back in 2006, when DHD had just launched, Finke mentioned that she’d love tobe buried in the Pierce Brothers cemetery in Westwood, the final resting placefor Hollywood luminaries like Marilyn Monroe, Merv Griffin and RodneyDangerfield.
“On my tombstone,” Finke said, “it could say: ‘She told the truth aboutHollywood.’”
Finke is survived by her sister, Terry Finke Dreyfus; her brother-in-law,James; and her nieces, Sarah Greenhill and Diana Leighton.
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