Quickly… Nikki Finke Is Gossip… And A Liar
I am making this a single entry as I start to write about the weekend, mostly because I don’t want the infection that is La Finke to turn anything else I might write sour.
But I still feel compelled to point this out…
Nikki’s coverage of the gossip around The Oscars was based around the two things that have made her what she is today… one source that had an agenda and didn’t care what effect his spreading of information had on the show and those in charge of it and secondly, the ability to leverage most of the information she did have – which went unpublished – into future favors.
Every year, she screams about not caring about it… and every year, she tries to make her reputation by running more gossip more quickly than anyone else. This year, the result was otherwise intelligent reporters at The New York Times embarrassing themselves by running gossip about changes in the production and even linking to a rundown of the show that most other papers decided to pass on promoting further. This is the influence of the gossip columnist and nasty piece of work known as Nikki Finke.
The notion that Roger Ebert or anyone else should be expected to parse her statements as she later claims she intended them when it is her regular method of operating to overwrite stories when she gets them wrong, trying to disappear her mistakes rather than admit them, is absurd on its face. This is what Roger got out of the UK Independent pick-up of her gossip. And this is what Nikki intended.
I guess that one should be kind to the simple-minded, but Nikki
What was worse? Her demanding an apology from Ebert (HA!) before even engaging him, or the entire “Oh, this is no surprise” tone only then to turn around and scream that Rourke was robbed.
Nikki doesn’t just want it both ways. She wants it all ways and none at the same time.
Heh. Why don’t you guys get a room? By which I mean you and your Envy. It would have to a rather large room. Particularly if Pissy Anger is invited, too.
And sorry, Dave. But you and Nikki are not in the same business. And that does not mean what you wish it to mean.
I’m no fan of Nikki Finke, but ultimately blame for her success can be laid at the feet of journalists like you.
During the Writers Strike, Nikki seemed to be the other person who cared. She sought out news, and she passed it along. Not always right, of course, and lord knows we don’t need to see “Toldja!” in a head line ever again, but the simple fact was, if you wanted any sort of hint about what was going on behind the scenes on a day-to-day, she was essentially the only game in town.
And even now, you limit yourself to reactive comments that sound more like whining.
You want to reduce Nikki’s audience and influence? Fine. Simply do a better job. Be her competitor, rather than her post-publication fact-checker.
It’s hard to read your repeated complaints about her without feeling like you’re jealous: “She’s not a real journalist! She just writes whatever!” and, unstated but underlining every word: “She has ten times the audience I have! What she writes gets picked up by everyone!”
If she is the news, its in part because you make it so, because you report on her reporting as often as – if not more so – than you report on the actual underlying facts.
So step up. Please. We all want somebody other than her.
Hotspur,
You’re absolutely right about the strike. She was the first read every morning. And that hasn’t changed much regarding all the SAG news as of late.
That she clearly is willing to be honest about the AMPTP’s mendacity is, of course, a continuing bonus. (In other words, no ‘plague on both your houses’ posing for Finke, a pose usually designed to flatter the user, and at the expense of the truth.)
And of course she was right about Chernin.
What you don’t get, Hotspur, is that no legitimate journalist wants to do what Nikki does… which is to run everything she gets without asking serious questions, spinning it with the skew of the person who presents it to her.
Do I have to become a self-loathing, raging, vicious gossip to keep Nikki in check. That’s what you are saying, in essence. And that, in and of itself, is a disgusting notion of a life and how one should deal with a problem child like Nikki.
I know it is hard for some to understand, but journalism is about editorial judgment more than – though some would say equal to – getting information.
The fact is, she doesn’t have 10 times the audience I have. She doesn’t actually have as many readers as MCN has and has maintained for years now. I have no issue about who picks up what I write… I get plenty of attention, thanks. I also generate enough revenue with my work to employ a significant number of people. Your insight about my ego issues is pretty far off base and based on ignorance of the facts.
But none of that is the point.
You are sitting here discussing me and you aren’t reading what I am writing or seriously considering it… which is why I feel compelled to keep writing it.
I don’t really care if you read Nikki, love Nikki, hate Nikki, or ignore Nikki. I want you to understand what Nikki does and how Nikki operates. Sunshine is the best disinfectant. And when you do actually process the reality of it and not the fun image of gossip gossip gossip, the moral judgment is yours to make for yourself, not mine.
But again… you wrote a long thing about me, not about Nikki.
You don’t get it.
So my work is not done.
If you wrote, “I like her attitude and I don’t care if it is accurate or news or anything but Perez Hilton level entertainment for people in the industry,” God bless you for your shallowness and let’s move on.
But you still think she is doing a job that others should aspire to… and that is a sickness on the industry where I earn my living and which, in spite of my protestations, I actually care about.
I have always believed that commanding respect is a great honor and having to demand it is a show of great weakness. I am proud to feel that I do the former and sad that you think I am doing the latter. But only I can be the arbiter of that for me.
Yes, Harley, Nikki and I are not in the same business. I am interested in the facts and sharing them with readers. She is in the business of self-promotion and the seeking of power at any cost. Nothing alike at all.
The reason the WGA strike worked for Nikki is that she took a side and her AMPTP friends didn’t feed her info.
But she was wrong about much of what happened and would happen.
Likewise, she has taken a side on SAG… with no actual reporting.
I agree… she was a must read, because she fed out raw information. But it wasn’t reporting. It was running, essentially, press releases from one side of the fight.
No one in their right minds would be supporting AMPTP in either labor situation. But calling them names is not journalism either. It sure riles up the crowd though. That’s pretty much my point.
EXCLUSIVE: The Lion is going to win again. Boo to The Lion and those fucking Romans.
People who support Nikki, I have found, tend to agree with Nikki on most of her stuff. And some people actually see how thin it is.
All reporters hear rumors. Nikki publishes them.
If you think that is what journalism should be, God bless and good luck. If that is the case, we are all doomed to US Magazine overtaking The New York Times. Proud moments.
Finke’s constant habit of correcting errors without making any sort of notation that she has done so is only one of a long line of reasons I can’t stand that woman. From her “Toldja!” crap to the way she’ll post a headline with nothing more than a note that say “keep refreshing” which then enables her to write up an article and maintain the original publish time .. thereby being FIRST! FIRST! FIRST! is ridiculous.
For me, DHD is right up there with Gawker/Defamer, Perez, and that annoying dude that writes Pink is the New Blog. Gossip Gossip Gossip
Yes, that’s a good way to view this. You’re the last man standing in the desperate battle to stop US Magazine from overtaking The NY Times. Which is a good way to view this stuff if it’s 1990. This century? Not so much.
Frankly, you bring this on your self. Over and over again. If Nikki Finke is of so little import — lacking the huge numbers MCN gets!! — then why bother going after her as frequently as you do? It makes you seem envious, as pointed out elsewhere. Also a little on the small side.
Methinks, in other words, that the lady doth protest too much. And I don’t mean Nikki.
Here’s how it boils down for me.
Nothing i read from Finke will ever improve my enjoyment of cinema. At least on Heat’s blog i can discuss some high art and debate the finer points of cinema.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with what Finke does. Every society needs a whore. There are those that live to see others fail, there are those so desperate for popularity and to feel relevant that they will write about anything and claim it to be ‘vital’ to whatever subject they report on.
I think Heat has his own biases. Scratch that. I know he does. But at least here there is some respect for the art of cinema.
There is nothing on Finke’s site except joyless gossip mongering. And call it what you want, but for me, success will never be measured by the angry, spite filled masses who love to revile in the failures and perceived shortcomings at others.
The woman spends every hour of the day locked in a room trading emails and posting on her blogs. She’s as joyless as those hate spewing internet talkbackers who hate for no other reason than to hate.
The internet is populated with attention starved “film fans” with nothing to offer the world other than contempt. And Finke has been declared their Queen. Ruling over the miserable isn’t a gift, nor does it require a talent. It requires some close relationships with studio execs willing to give her exclusive information that they know will be spun through whatever filter they wish to have it viewed through.
Finke is their whore. I don’t begrudge her for it. If she didn’t do it, someone else would. And that is really the point of all of this my friends. It’s not that Finke is any more awful than many of her peers (wells, faraci, others who deal in dreck), but it’s the fact that there is a market for this snarky, irreverant bile.
I have no horse in this race. I’m just a guy who likes talking about film with other people, and nothing Nikki Finke writes will ever help anyone enjoy a single frame of cinema.
There’s no ‘entertainment’ in what she reports, only anger, gossip, and a desperation to be received as relevant.
Maybe we should spend more time celebrating that which we love about film rather than the seedy underbelly populated by attention whores.
Wow, you really missed my point.
I’m not saying you should be a gossip. I’m not saying you shouldn’t check your sources.
I am saying that when something like the strike is going on, you should report on it aggressively – which she did, and you didn’t.
I am saying that when there are hirings and firings afoot, you should report on it aggressively. Which she does, and you don’t.
Now, maybe she reports too aggressively. I happen to agree with you about many – but not all – of her shortcomings. She basically prints whatever anybody gives her, without much of a filter.
On the other hand, when it came to the strike, she did a better job reporting than you did. She reported more accurate information in a timely manner than you did – by a mile. Everybody I talked to on the lines knew to took what she wrote with a grain of salt, but a lot of it could be confirmed by piecing information together with what we heard from the strike captains, or board members who visited us on the line.
So we got useful information from her. From you? Not so much.
That’s what I’m saying you should emulate. And if you don’t understand that, then you should think twice before you tell anybody else that they don’t “get it.”
Similarly, the fact that a bigwig is on the verge of getting fired is actually useful news to a lot of people. It may well affect someone’s decision to take a certain job or keep looking, to sign on to a certain project or not, etc.
Would it be nice if she did a better job making sure she got everything right? Absolutely. On the other hand, it wouldn’t actually be nicer if we were all left in the dark until it was too late to do anything about it: again, if she commits the sin of writing too much, you commit the sin of writing too little.
There’s real news out there, which affects the lives of working professionals in this town, which you dismiss in your response to me as “gossip” but which isn’t gossip, not necessarily.
And if people could get that information from somebody who had better journalistic standards, then nobody would ever read Nikki Finke, she’d be out of a job, and we wouldn’t have to listen to you whine about her any more. Win, win, win!
And it goes beyond that. When the strike was going on, for the three months I was on the picket lines, I interacted with one print or web journalist. One. And I was the press rep for my gate. Pretty much all the people I talked to about it said the same thing. No Poland-approved journalists were interested in what those of us on the line were doing, saying, and thinking.
Finke, for all her faults, was. And whether you like it or not, what the people on the line are saying and thinking is news, too, not just gossip.
In your zeal to accuse me of not getting it, you don’t get it yourself. You want to dismiss everything she writes as gossip, ignoring the real value it has to people in this industry.
UPDATE: Roger Ebert Apologizes To Me…
http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/im-waiting-for-roger-eberts-apology/
Wait, what happened with Ebert? I don’t care about her enough to go find out.
I wouldn’t even know who Nikki Finke was if not for this site/blog. Once I found out, she and her work were still of no import to me and I’ve given up on following your bi-monthly bone-to-pick with her. I just don’t get what it is she does and as much as I’d like to grasp it all and see why people hate her so…I just have to let that one go.
But I get the professional aggravation….I feel it to from other boorsish bastards and asses of the internet movie blogiverse.
It’s a funny world we live in.
DON’T CALL IT A SHUTOUT!
BUT LEXG JUST OWNED EVERY FUCKING THREAD ON THE FRONT PAGE.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
FUCK YEAH.
Throwing down the GAUNTLET AGAIN to one DAVID NOT ROD LURIE POLAND:
Help me get SAG, help me GET FAMOUS, or help me FUCK A MODEL, you will NEVER FUCKING SEE ME on this BLOG AGAIN EVER.
IT’S ON YOU.
Oh man, I just skimmed through Nikki’s live snarking. What a waste.
And can I add that adding “not that there’s anything wrong with that. etc etc prop 8!!!” doesn’t really change the fact that you (if you’re reading, Nikki) would’ve give the gay references a break. And where’s the retraction about Nicole Kidman not presenting when, quite clearly, she did. Ugh. What a horrible witch Nikki is.
Um, Nikki, Ebert didn’t apologize to you. I suppose if you want to read it that way, that’s your right, but that’s hardly an apology.
i have no idea who nikki finke is, but when i clicked onto the link she provided so as to see what all the fuss is about, i saw a headline scrolling quite fast across the top of the page, which my dyslexic brain read as ‘SAG vs VAG’. my first thought was, ‘shit, lex must have jumped ship for a gig doing nikki finke’s scrolling headlines’. or course it actually said ‘SAG vs SAG’ (far more tedius at any rate)
i have no idea why i just posted that, chalk it up to goofiness
Hotspur –
Sorry it took me days to get back to this, but I think your last comment was sincere and worthy of a real response.
You wrote:
“When the strike was going on, for the three months I was on the picket lines, I interacted with one print or web journalist. One. And I was the press rep for my gate. Pretty much all the people I talked to about it said the same thing. No Poland-approved journalists were interested in what those of us on the line were doing, saying, and thinking.
Finke, for all her faults, was. And whether you like it or not, what the people on the line are saying and thinking is news, too, not just gossip.
In your zeal to accuse me of not getting it, you don’t get it yourself. You want to dismiss everything she writes as gossip, ignoring the real value it has to people in this industry.”
I don’t have any problem with inherently biased publishing. I only ask that the person publishing it not pretend that it is something else. Be the voice of the strikers… just don’t pretend it is, to steal a lie, “fair and balanced.”
As I wrote while the strike was happening and often write of what Nikki prints, it can be very helpful. I like knowing what the line thinks. And I like knowing what a studio head thinks or wants people to think they think. There is very real value to that.
But that is also the problem. Nikki pretends that it is not one-source or one-sided. And that is where it becomes a problem.
I completely appreciate how the strikers deified Nikki last year. She was 100% on their side… until the studios told her what they wanted written, she wrote it, and the WGA had to admonish people not to listen to her. But that only happened 3 times, so it really was the outlier as things rolled out.
But being a fansite – in that case, a WGA strike fan – does not make her a journalist with editorial thoughtfulness. And that thoughtfulness is, to me, the difference between a journo and a gossip.
“People want to know” has always been the bain of the legit journo’s existance. What the reader wants is not relevant, except on the business side. And as journalism remains an endangered form, that line is getting pushed to the “wrong” side more and more. No one embodies this more than Nikki. And in the end, very few people seem to care enough to speak to it, because, indeed, she has the ear of the industry right now and no one wants to put themselves in the way of a stampeding elephant.
Worse, the chatter value of her gossip raws previously legitimate journalists and outlets closer to the gossip, much as Defamer did before her and US Magazine did to publishing before that.
And might I say, the way Hustler set the tone for men’s nudie mags years ago. If you look at the history of Playboy – which I did as a young man – you will see the evolution of immodesty driven by competition by Penthouse and then Hustler. To try to stay “relevant,” Playboy went from breasts and butts to breasts and pubic hair to shots of labia. They also went up and down the implant hill.
The point is, fear drives change, even in the industry leaders. And those changes are almost always a mistake. Pornographic mags (even with great articles) are an even lower form of journalism than e-journalism…. but the same canary in the mine thing is true.
Nikki is the Hustler Magazine of e-journalism. She fearlessly attaches the camera to the speculum and shows you what everyone else knew was there, but thought it was in bad taste (or unprofessional) to show. In response, Defamer/Gawker is driven to show more labial shots, with the
It would be unfortunate to think of Nikki Finke as an “accurate journalist”. She is not.
And during the strike, her accuracy record hovered somewhere around maybe 30 percent. Her tendency to rewrite her posts and retroactively remove her mistakes has obscured this, but I think we all still remember how she got punked with that “cabal of A-list writers” hoax. And she still hasn’t apologized for that one or even admitted it.
Her enthusiasm for the strike, and her present nostalgia for it, are distasteful to most of us who work in the business. It cost her nothing and in fact boosted her numbers to make admiring noises about a situation in which the town was burning.