Entertainment journalist and founding father of Deadline Nikki Finke has died at age 68.
In response to her family, Finke died in Boca Raton, Fla. on Sunday morning after a chronic illness, as confirmed by Deadline.
Finke grew up in Sands Point on Long Island before graduating from Wellesley College. Her early work included reporting for publications equivalent to Associated Press, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, the Recent York Observer after which Recent York Magazine before starting Deadline.
Finke founded Deadline — a web based version of her Deadline Hollywood Day by day blog for LA Weekly — in 2006. The location was acquired by Penske Media Corporation in 2009, with Finke becoming editor-in-chief and general manager.
The veteran journalist was famous for her tenacious kind of reporting and saucy entertainment scoops about celebrities in Hollywood, and was known for occasionally starting her stories with “toldja” if something she was working on was true.
She was well-known for her reporting in regards to the 2007 – 2008 writers strike, becoming one in every of the more outstanding writers to achieve this attributable to her inside scoops from the writers who were striking, in addition to her willingness to openly criticize top executives in Hollywood.
Finke left PMC in Nov. 2013, launching her own entertainment news site, NikkiFinke.com. She then launched Hollywood Dementia in 2015, a site with fictional stories written by various entertainment journalists and insiders in regards to the entertainment industry.
The location published its last story in 2019, with Finke then returning to PMC in 2017 as a consultant.
Finke returned to Deadline in 2016 to have a good time the location’s 10-year anniversary, and wrote that she was “thrilled” the location was still “thriving” a decade on.
“It gives me great pleasure to see that, while Deadline may be very different from what I created, it’s thriving as an integral a part of the entertainment establishment,” she wrote, adding she didn’t got down to be a “disruptor” or a web journalist who “created something out of nothing.”
“I needed a quicker approach to report breaking entertainment news than my weekly newspaper column. So I purchased the URL DeadlineHollywoodDaily.com for 14 bucks and alter,” she wrote. “And today, under Penske Media ownership, is a web site value $100+ million.”
Finke was notoriously reclusive and was said to rarely leave her house, reportedly attributable to her lifelong battle with diabetes and discomfort over being obese, as per The Wrap.
Finke survived by her sister, Terry Finke Dreyfus, her brother-in-law James, and nieces Sarah Greenhill and Diana Leighton.
“At her best, Nikki Finke embodied the spirit of journalism and was never afraid to inform the hard truths with an incisive style and enigmatic spark. She was brash and true,” Jay Penske, the founder, chairman and CEO of PMC, said in an announcement on Sunday. “It was never easy with Nikki, but she’s going to all the time remain some of the memorable people in my life.”
Entertainment journalist and founding father of Deadline Nikki Finke has died at age 68.
In response to her family, Finke died in Boca Raton, Fla. on Sunday morning after a chronic illness, as confirmed by Deadline.
Finke grew up in Sands Point on Long Island before graduating from Wellesley College. Her early work included reporting for publications equivalent to Associated Press, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, the Recent York Observer after which Recent York Magazine before starting Deadline.
Finke founded Deadline — a web based version of her Deadline Hollywood Day by day blog for LA Weekly — in 2006. The location was acquired by Penske Media Corporation in 2009, with Finke becoming editor-in-chief and general manager.
The veteran journalist was famous for her tenacious kind of reporting and saucy entertainment scoops about celebrities in Hollywood, and was known for occasionally starting her stories with “toldja” if something she was working on was true.
She was well-known for her reporting in regards to the 2007 – 2008 writers strike, becoming one in every of the more outstanding writers to achieve this attributable to her inside scoops from the writers who were striking, in addition to her willingness to openly criticize top executives in Hollywood.
Finke left PMC in Nov. 2013, launching her own entertainment news site, NikkiFinke.com. She then launched Hollywood Dementia in 2015, a site with fictional stories written by various entertainment journalists and insiders in regards to the entertainment industry.
The location published its last story in 2019, with Finke then returning to PMC in 2017 as a consultant.
Finke returned to Deadline in 2016 to have a good time the location’s 10-year anniversary, and wrote that she was “thrilled” the location was still “thriving” a decade on.
“It gives me great pleasure to see that, while Deadline may be very different from what I created, it’s thriving as an integral a part of the entertainment establishment,” she wrote, adding she didn’t got down to be a “disruptor” or a web journalist who “created something out of nothing.”
“I needed a quicker approach to report breaking entertainment news than my weekly newspaper column. So I purchased the URL DeadlineHollywoodDaily.com for 14 bucks and alter,” she wrote. “And today, under Penske Media ownership, is a web site value $100+ million.”
Finke was notoriously reclusive and was said to rarely leave her house, reportedly attributable to her lifelong battle with diabetes and discomfort over being obese, as per The Wrap.
Finke survived by her sister, Terry Finke Dreyfus, her brother-in-law James, and nieces Sarah Greenhill and Diana Leighton.
“At her best, Nikki Finke embodied the spirit of journalism and was never afraid to inform the hard truths with an incisive style and enigmatic spark. She was brash and true,” Jay Penske, the founder, chairman and CEO of PMC, said in an announcement on Sunday. “It was never easy with Nikki, but she’s going to all the time remain some of the memorable people in my life.”
