Blogger Nikki Finke Stays One Step Ahead

Deadline Hollywood Daily is insiders' first call, for good or ill

By Harry Kimball, Newser Staff

Posted Oct 5, 2009 1:38 PM CDT

(Newser) – Nikki Finke works out of her apartment in Hollywood, surrounded by six phones, a laptop, and a cat. Although she doesn’t go out and mingle with her contacts, she certainly has them. And their desire to be on her good side—or stay out of her sights entirely—has made Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily blog a fearsome news source in Tinseltown. “She’s very, very, very accurate,” an exec says. “You have a supposedly private conversation with two other people, and it’s on her site within an hour.”

Finke is not only apparently omniscient, but also judgmental, Tad Friend writes in the New Yorker. She has a long memory and a clear code: "She hates being lied to," says a publicist. Part gossip columnist, part hyperconnected business reporter, she's hardly a stickler for etiquette—“Stick it where the sun don’t shine, you asswipe,” she told another publicist—but struggles with the nature of her valued relationships with the power elite. Above all, Finke says, she tries to keep her crusade professional: “A veterinarian treats animals—he’s not an animal.”

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NBC Universal President and Chief Operating Officer Ron Meyer is a friend, and perhaps future foe, to Nikki Finke. (AP Photo)

The famous Hollywood sign in the Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles. (AP Photo)

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People called me about Finke before I had a chance to call them, either to praise her (so that they could let her know they had done so) or to spew venom, or to be able to report back to her what I'd asked about—or, in at least two cases, all three. - Tad Friend

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Blogger Nikki Finke Stays One Step Ahead