The
journalist Nikki Finke has long struck fear into the hearts of
Hollywood executives and entertainers, publishing a blend of vitriol and
scoops on her blog Deadline Hollywood.
In recent weeks, though, she had gone silent in the face of a legal dispute
with the company that bought Deadline, Penske Media Corporation. It
looked as if her career as a chronicler of Hollywood might be over. But
now, a book deal and possible return to journalism are in the works.
Ms.
Finke made headlines this week after an anonymous group calling itself
“The Committee for Decency in Journalism” published a website, NikkiStink.com,
that posted pictures and video of the rarely photographed Ms. Finke. It
also threatened to disclose more secrets about Ms. Finke’s private life
if she did not stop publishing her biting journalism.
Though
most of that was taken down by Thursday, the website caused a stir in
Hollywood. It also had an unintended effect, prompting a series of
conversations between Ms. Finke and her former employer, Jay Penske,
said a person with knowledge of the situation who spoke on the condition
of anonymity to describe private discussions. Those talks could mean
she will write again for Penske, which also owns Variety. The two
recently signed a settlement agreement worth millions to Ms. Finke.
Ms.
Finke has also nearly completed a nonfiction book on Hollywood that
will be published by Simon & Schuster, its president, Jonathan Karp,
said in an email. Mr. Karp, who said he was editing the book himself,
declined to provide details about its contents and said a publication
date had not been set.
“Whenever we publish,” he wrote, “the book will be an event.”
A
book by Ms. Finke will likely be met with dread in movie and television
industry circles. An open letter to Ms. Finke, published this week on
the mystery website, said that for years she had “threatened and bullied
the Hollywood community into providing you information so that you
could use it to ridicule, abuse and destroy people.”
The
website listed 79 insults she had directed at stars like Robin Williams
and executives like the former Disney chief Michael Eisner, most of
them unprintable. Beneath them, under the bold headline “GOTJA!” — a dig
at Ms. Finke’s habit of writing “TOLDJA” in her posts — were
photographs of Ms. Finke that appeared to have been taken secretly. The
site also included some personal information, including pictures of her
apartment, and it mocked Ms. Finke for her weight, calling her “large.”
By Thursday,
the site’s content was replaced with a shorter letter. “We think we’ve
made our point,” it said. “Should it become necessary to add even more
powerful content we will. Believe us, we have it.”
It
is unclear who is behind the site. It is registered to Domains by
Proxy, a company in Scottsdale, Ariz., that protects the identities of
people who sign up for websites. Its source code reveals little about
its creators, except that the site had been set up with technology
intended to serve large quantities of web traffic quickly, without
crashing. The creators also appeared to have stripped identifying
information from the pictures.
“This
is like the board game Clue,” said Matthew Belloni, the executive
editor of The Hollywood Reporter, which was among the first to report
the site’s existence. “Everyone in this town is a suspect.”
Some, like Mike Fleming Jr. of Deadline, denounced the site, calling it “reprehensible, meanspirited and disgusting.”
Others said that it was, if anything, too easy on her journalistic
tactics, though they would not say so for public attribution.
Ms.
Finke started her blog in 2006, just as people began to exploit the
web’s potential to spread stories that would not have found homes in
traditional newspapers. She became known as a machine for scoops, and
for her tough, personal style of reporting and writing. In 2009, Penske
acquired the site. And then, in 2012, it also bought the industry trade
magazine Variety, a competitor to Deadline. That set off a dispute that
caused Ms. Finke to leave the company.
This June, she started NikkiFinke.com,
her own site, and again began reporting on Hollywood in apparent
defiance of a noncompete agreement with Penske. She stopped writing on
Aug. 11. Because of restrictions connected to the settlement
negotiations, neither Ms. Finke nor Penske representatives can speak
publicly on the split or its aftermath.
Ms.
Finke has also been approached by Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity
Fair, about potentially writing for his magazine. On Twitter Thursday,
Ms. Finke raised another possibility for her future to her 233,000
followers. Jack Shafer, a media columnist for Reuters, had suggested she
“pack up my act and bring it to DC,” she wrote. “Others saying the same thing. Should I?”
