By Owen Reyes · Republished 2026-05-20 · Originally reported by Richard Horgan on FishbowlLA, 2012
In July 2012 TheWrap put hard numbers on a question the trade press preferred to leave vague: was the relaunched, glossy Hollywood Reporter actually making money?
Then
With Richard Beckman exiting Prometheus Global Media and Dottie Mattison replacing him, TheWrap’s Sharon Waxman dug into the finances of the company’s flagship. Citing two sources with knowledge of the company, she reported that The Hollywood Reporter would lose $6 million in 2012.
Waxman credited Janice Min with making the magazine a lively, attractive read that Hollywood liked — but argued the business model was not working, citing roughly 12,000 paying subscribers out of a claimed 70,000 circulation.
The responses were combative. A Prometheus publicist denied the magazine was unprofitable; Beckman reportedly wished Waxman a happy Fourth of July and hung up. Min, in a statement to FishbowlLA, dismissed the piece as ‘agenda masquerading as reporting’ and accused TheWrap of fabricating accounting numbers.
Now
The uncomfortable underlying question — whether a glossy print trade could be profitable in the 2010s — was the right one to ask. The trade-magazine economics that Waxman and Min argued over kept deteriorating, and cost-cutting became a recurring feature at The Hollywood Reporter and its rivals.
Janice Min left The Hollywood Reporter in 2014, and the title passed through the ownership changes that eventually delivered it into the Penske Media–Eldridge joint venture.
The spat is a clean example of a recurring trade-press dynamic: an outlet’s finances are legitimate news, the outlet bristles at being covered, and the disagreement plays out as a public exchange of denials and counter-claims.
Original report archived on the Wayback Machine.