Deadline Hollywood

• 1. Introduction

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  Deadline Hollywood began not as a website but as a column. In June 2002, Nikki Finke started writing a series called Deadline Hollywood for LA Weekly, covering the entertainment industry with a directness that set her apart from the trade press of her era. Four years later, in March 2006, she took that column online as a blog called Deadline Hollywood Daily. The questions that follow are about how that blog became one of the most closely watched sites in the business, how Finke struck a deal that changed her career, and what happened when the publication she built collided with the corporate world she covered.

• 2. From Column to Blog

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  Nikki Finke launched the Deadline Hollywood Daily blog in March 2006 as a direct extension of her LA Weekly column work. She officially positioned it as an entertainment trade website the same year, rather than leaving it as a side project. Within three years of that launch, the site had grown to be counted among Hollywood's most followed websites. That rise happened fast enough that by 2009 it had attracted the attention of Penske Media Corporation, then operating under the name Mail.com Media.

• 3. The Sale to Penske

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  Finke sold Deadline to Penske Media Corporation in 2009 for what was described as a low-seven-figure sum. The deal was structured to give her more than just the sale price. She received a five-year-plus employment contract that the Los Angeles Times reported was worth millions of dollars, along with a share of the site's ongoing revenue. In September of that same year, the URL moved to deadline.com and the site dropped the word "Daily" from its name, becoming simply Deadline Hollywood.

• 4. Expanding the Newsroom

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  The year 2010 brought a significant push beyond Los Angeles. Penske hired Variety reporter Mike Fleming Jr. to serve as the New York editor, extending Deadline's reach to the East Coast entertainment market. Tim Adler, who had been at the Financial Times, was brought in to lead Deadline London. Nellie Andreeva joined to cover television and was named co-editor-in-chief for TV coverage, giving the site dedicated leadership for what had become one of the most closely tracked beats in the industry.

• 5. Finke's Departure

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  Nikki Finke remained the editor of Deadline Hollywood until November 2013. Her exit followed a year-long disagreement with Penske, and the friction had a specific trigger: Penske had bought Variety, a competing trade magazine and website. Finke had built Deadline in part as a challenger to the existing trade press, and working for a company that now owned one of those rivals put her in an untenable position. Her departure closed the founding chapter of the publication she had started with a single column eleven years earlier.