Nikki Finke is in serious talks with Politico about writing a column on politics. Why, then, are the people most familiar with her previous work covering Hollywood afraid to talk about it?
“There is no upside to me saying anything about Nikki Finke,” Scott Feinberg, who covers film awards for the Hollywood Reporter, told the Washington Examiner. “I’d prefer to let a sleeping dog lie, if you will!”
“Sorry, no comment on this,” said Brian Lowry, an entertainment columnist for Variety.
“No comment,” said Deadline Hollywood Editor Anita Busch.
BuzzFeed entertainment reporter Kate Aurthur: “I’m going to pass.”
“I’m going pass on speaking,” said Joseph Kapsch, executive editor of the entertainment news website The Wrap. “I respect Nikki Finke as a journalist but I think it’s best I don’t speak for this story.”
“No comment,” echoed Kapsch’s colleague Jeff Sneider, who reports on the film industry.
Finke, a California-based journalist most known for breaking big news in the entertainment industry and skewering Hollywood executives and other journalists along the way, is a touchy subject for her peers in the media world.
The most recent proof of Finke’s notoriety came in a personal email written by Sony executive Amy Pascal, who is at the center of Sony’s hacked email scandal.
After Finke broke one of her famous stories in July – this one focusing on trouble at Sony – Pascal fired an email off to her husband, a former friend of Finke’s, calling Finke “a pathetic hateful person” and a “misogynistic pig.”
Finke hasn’t written in a while, due to legal battles with a former employer. The New York Times, however, reported Friday that Finke is currently in talks with Politico to write a political column.
Finke rose to fame as an aggressive reporter and as the founder of Deadline Hollywood. She sold the website in 2009 for several million dollars to billionaire Jay Penske.
Their relationship crumbled soon after and the result was Finke leaving Deadline in 2013, supposedly forbidden by a non-compete clause in her contract with Penske from reporting on the entertainment industry elsewhere.
Finke tried, though. She started up NikkiFinke.com where she broke a few sporadic stories, including the one that so angered Pascal, before swiping it blank just a few months later, reportedly after a settlement with Penske.
“I’d take it [the report on Finke partnering with Politico] with a grain of salt,” said one veteran media and entertainment reporter who has competed with Finke for scoops in the past. He spoke on condition of anonymity, as he wasn’t authorized by his current editors to talk to news media about the subject at hand.
The reporter said he suspects Finke is itching to get back into reporting but that her reputation as a difficult person to work with doesn’t seem to lend itself to working at Politico, a place where reporters work at breakneck speed and adhere to a tight, top-down hierarchy.
Rafat Ali, a business journalist and entrepreneur in New York, tweeted a similar sentiment about the report on Finke’s supposed Politico negotiations. “Politico will regret this, guaranteed,” he wrote. Ali declined, however, to elaborate on the missive when approached by the Examiner.
Finke has said in the past she makes for a miserable employee.
“I don’t want a boss. I love being my own boss,” she recalled telling Penske before he bought out Deadline Hollywood, according to entertainment website Vulture. She also said she told him she’d be “the worst employee you’ll ever have.”
Finke does, however, have a history in news outside of her entertainment industry reporting. She once worked for the Associated Press and Newsweek covering American politics and some foreign affairs.
“Nikki Finke, political reporter? It’s happened before,” wrote the Washington Post in September.
But Finke’s journalistic style — a gleeful mix of intimidation and harsh criticism of both her writing subjects and her competitors — would be at least sort of new for D.C.’s politics and media pros, who largely rest comfortably and politely among each other.
“I know waterboarding is supposed to be awful but having Nikki call you on the phone is probably the same thing,” said the veteran media and entertainment reporter.
“Should they [D.C.’s political class] be quaking in their boots? She’s still a good reporter but I just wonder how she would be with starting all over again.” He said. “I think it’s a whole different world in Washington: bigger competition and I dare say more furious. I think a lot of her antics would not work there.”
Betsy Rothstein, a politics and media gossip blogger for the Daily Caller, said she would welcome Finke’s presence in D.C., though the two have sniped at each other in the past.
“Nikki Finke was furious with me because I once referred to her as a ‘gossip guru,’ which some might consider high praise, which is how I meant it,” Rothstein told the Examiner. “She called me an ‘a—–e’ for that. Being called that by her was a moment of great pride for me. I think she’d be incredibly jarring and insulting for Washington and I’d welcome that with open arms.”
Others also celebrated the possibility of a political Finke column.
“This could kind of great, to be honest,” tweeted Laura Olin, a Democratic communications specialist who worked on digital strategy for President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.
“Nikki Finke moving to Politico is the most logical media movie I’ve heard all year,” Eric Geller, an editor for digital news site the Daily Dot, wrote on Twitter.
Then there’s Finke. She declined to comment on the record for this story.
