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The Dark Legacy of Nikki Finke

Finke presented herself as a no-bullshit reporter who kept Hollywood moguls honest, and we all found her copy completely irresistible. But she perverted the profession by blackmailing sources, often targeting the weak, and weaponizing the internet to push her bile—and her own agenda.

Nikki Finke
Nikki Finke, founder of Deadline, passed away at age 68. Photo: Jen Rosenstein
Matthew Belloni
October 10, 2022

My last of probably hundreds of testy exchanges with Nikki Finke over the years occurred about a year ago, in my Twitter DMs, just as we were launching Puck. “You should return to lawyering,” she wrote me. “More money and steady work. Journalism is a dead profession.”