The dominant entertainment biz reporter

Tad Friend of The New Yorker profiles Nikki Finke, whose blog Deadline Hollywood Daily on the business of entertainment has become a must-read for executives.

Friend writes, “In recent years, as her fame has increased, she has felt so vulnerable to public scrutiny that she no longer sees her subjects at all. But in seclusion she manages to seem ubiquitous, covering the golden acres from Santa Monica to Sunset-Gower from a home newsroom containing six phones, a laptop, and her cat, Blue.

“Her all-knowing voice on the phone is reminiscent of Charlie of ‘Charlie’s Angels’—yet she salts her site with references to her diabetes and dental work, drawing readers into the drama of her daily struggle. Three weeks ago, she posted an exclusive: ‘I just got out of the hospital. Here’s breaking news . . . Dick Cook’—the revered chairman of Walt Disney Studios—’has been fired.’

“A little while later, she added, ‘Hollywood can’t believe this has happened, especially on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. ‘I’m shocked by Dick’s ouster. I love him more than life,’ one Disney insider told me, adding ‘I walked out of a meeting and heard this. And, 4 minutes later, you post it.” Finke told me, ‘I literally ripped the I.V. out of my arm to leave the hospital, and I would have had the story an hour earlier if I hadn’t stopped to get an antibiotic.'”

Read more here.