The L.A. Weekly columnist's website "has supplanted traditional media as a primary source of strike news" for many, the New York Times reports. She's even been invoked in picket line chants. "Variety and The Reporter stink. We get our news from Nikki Finke," Ugly Betty writer Bill Wrubel chanted. Since the strike began, Finke has written 142 posts about it, the Times reports. She said she had worked almost around the clock for three weeks, and had fallen asleep at the computer four times. "It's been brutal, but it's also been exhilarating because I love news," she says. "I love it -- a scoop is better than sex." More on Finke from Bloomberg News.
Nikki Finke's "long-awaited biography" of Hollywood superagent Michael Ovitz was picked up by The Martell Agency only days after the LA Weekly columnist's book deal was canceled by a Warner/Hachette imprint, reports Authorlink. "The Man Who Wanted Everything," which was originally due to be published in July 2007, has been in the works for 15 years, according to the site.
"Finke's prickly distrust for (figures of authority) practically borders on disrespect, if not outright disdain," writes Jon Friedman, who also says "nobody writes tougher stuff than this L.A. Weekly scribe." Finke says she's different than other reporters who cover the movie industry because she focuses on business, not celebrity, and because she could care less about what Tinseltown royalty thinks of her: "I write mean -- end of story. I'm unapologetic about it - end of story. I watch out for the shareholders -- end of story." UPDATE: Finke responds on her blog that Friedman "wouldn’t have dared write an article like this about a male business journalist working for a mainstream newspaper." She also accuses him of attributing his own statements to her and printing her off-the-record remarks.
