Deadline founder and veteran journalist Nikki Finke dead at 68

Leisure journalist and founding father of Deadline Nikki Finke has died at age 68.

Based on her household, Finke died in Boca Raton, Fla. on Sunday morning after a protracted sickness, as confirmed by Deadline.

Finke grew up in Sands Level on Lengthy Island earlier than graduating from Wellesley Faculty. Her early work included reporting for publications equivalent to Related Press, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Occasions, the New York Observer after which New York Journal earlier than beginning Deadline.

Finke based Deadline — an internet model of her Deadline Hollywood Day by day weblog for LA Weekly — in 2006. The location was acquired by Penske Media Company in 2009, with Finke changing into editor-in-chief and common supervisor.

The veteran journalist was well-known for her tenacious fashion of reporting and saucy leisure scoops about celebrities in Hollywood, and was recognized for sometimes beginning her tales with “toldja” if one thing she was engaged on was true.

She was well-known for her reporting in regards to the 2007 – 2008 writers strike, changing into one of many extra distinguished writers to take action as a result of her inside scoops from the writers who have been hanging, in addition to her willingness to overtly criticize prime executives in Hollywood.

Finke left PMC in Nov. 2013, launching her personal leisure information website, NikkiFinke.com. She then launched Hollywood Dementia in 2015, a website with fictional tales written by varied leisure journalists and insiders in regards to the leisure business.

The location printed its final story in 2019, with Finke then returning to PMC in 2017 as a marketing consultant.

Finke returned to Deadline in 2016 to have fun the positioning’s 10-year anniversary, and wrote that she was “thrilled” the positioning was nonetheless “thriving” a decade on.

“It offers me nice pleasure to see that, whereas Deadline may be very completely different from what I created, it’s thriving as an integral a part of the leisure institution,” she wrote, including she didn’t got down to be a “disruptor” or an web journalist who “created one thing out of nothing.”

“I wanted a faster technique to report breaking leisure information than my weekly newspaper column. So I purchased the URL DeadlineHollywoodDaily.com for 14 bucks and alter,” she wrote. “And at the moment, underneath Penske Media possession, is an internet site price $100+ million.”

Finke was notoriously reclusive and was mentioned to hardly ever depart her home, reportedly as a result of 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 greatest, Nikki Finke embodied the spirit of journalism and was by no means afraid to inform the arduous truths with an incisive fashion and enigmatic spark. She was brash and true,” Jay Penske, the founder, chairman and CEO of PMC, mentioned in an announcement on Sunday. “It was by no means simple with Nikki, however she is going to at all times stay some of the memorable folks in my life.”

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