Nikki Finke: Celebs Rumors

The last time WGA picket lines formed in 2007, writers didn’t have an efficient way to communicate with fellow strikers about group meet-ups, illegal productions, and all those clever placards. The only place they could turn to for regular information was this very space, in which the late Nikki Finke would post regular missives about strike action, the broken-off negotiations and the financial impact of the 100-day work stoppage.

Nikki Finke, born December 16 1953, died October 9 2022Sign up to the Front Page newsletter for free: Your essential guide to the day's agenda from The Telegraph - direct to your inbox seven days a week.

. The site was dedicated to Finke’s firsthand accounts of how she saw the entertainment business.  Deadline was founded in 2006, and later purchased by Penske in 2009.

As Hurricane Ian roared through Florida last week, I was thinking of Nikki Finke, who had moved to the state four years ago but now was living under hospice care in Boca Raton, the result of a long and involved illness that finally took her life in the early hours of Sunday at the age of 68.

Deadline Nikki Finke has died at age 68.According to her family, Finke died in Boca Raton, Fla. on Sunday morning after a prolonged illness, as confirmed by Deadline.Finke grew up in Sands Point on Long Island before graduating from Wellesley College.

Penske Media Corp. purchased Deadline for a reported $14 million, with her remaining editor-in-chief and continuing her reporting and commentary.Finke was legendary in her day, writing scoops on her Deadline blog that often proclaimed “Toldja!” when something she’d reported turned out to be true.But although she was required daily reading in Hollywood, Finke was also feared and hated by many, as she became notorious for threatening sources and trading one piece of information to get another more damaging piece of information.Among the targets of her often personal-seeming grievances were then-NBC chief Ben Silverman, the former head of the William Morris agency and many other Hollywood power players of the early oughts.She suffered from lifelong diabetes and was notoriously reclusive because of her discomfort over being overweight, having been a society debutante as a young woman.

Nikki Finke, the veteran entertainment journalist who founded Deadline in 2006 and helped grow it into a major player among Hollywood trades, died Sunday morning in Boca Raton, FL after a prolonged illness. She was 68.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer Nikki Finke, a tenacious journalist who revolutionized entertainment reporting with what became the Hollywood trade website Deadline, died Sunday morning in Boca Raton, Flor. after a prolonged illness. She was 68. After spending the beginning of her career reporting on everything from Moscow (for the Associated Press) to Washington, D.C. (for Newsweek), in 2002, Finke started a column for L.A. Weekly called Deadline Hollywood, which she took online in March 2006 as Deadline Hollywood Daily in an effort to better cover up-to-the-minute news. Rather than focus on celebrity or content, Finke placed a singularly unforgiving spotlight on the studio executives and high-powered agents who make the industry run. She was unafraid to call out what she believed to be ill-conceived or substandard decision-making in the bluntest possible terms, and her take-no-prisoners approach made her site a must-read in a media ecosystem Finke saw as excessively fawning and credulous.