There’s a two-page “Vanities” chart in Vanity Fair‘s just-out Hollywood issue, comparing the earmarks of Old Hollywood with Old New Hollywood. On the second page Hedda Hopper and Deadline Holly- wood Daily‘s Nikki Finke are equated as the old and new versions of “terrifying industry gossip.” Except Nikki pasted over the word “gossip” on her site and changed the term to “reporter.”
I can sympathize with the paste-over impulse. Finke is a hybrid columnist of some kind, but there’s no doubt that she makes the calls and digs into the particulars like any hard-boiled reporter. She makes judgment calls and says what she thinks deep down, but her column wouldn’t be what it is without her sources, her note pad and old-fashioned shoe leather.
