By Owen Reyes · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Greg on FishbowlLA, November 2007
In early November 2007, FishbowlLA interviewed Eric Mika — The Hollywood Reporter’s senior vice president and publishing director — about the trade’s ambitious global-expansion push. Mika told FBLA that “the Hollywood Reporter for the last several months is defying gravity,” and described a substantial print-and-international investment: roughly $5 million, new international hires, weekend international editions, and home delivery in London, Paris, Frankfurt, and Hong Kong.
Then
The November 2007 moment was structurally remarkable in retrospect. Mika was describing a substantial print-investment expansion at almost exactly the moment when the broader American newspaper-and-print-media economy was about to enter its most catastrophic contraction.
The competitive framing was the longstanding Hollywood Reporter-vs-Daily Variety trade-press rivalry. The original piece cited Associated Press circulation figures: HR at just over 25,000, Daily Variety at 32,000.
The “defying gravity” framing was Mika’s own. He was, in November 2007, genuinely optimistic about the trade’s print trajectory. Greg’s FishbowlLA framing took Mika’s optimism at face value.
Now
The optimism of the 2007 piece did not survive contact with what followed. The Hollywood Reporter ceased its daily print edition in 2010 and relaunched as a weekly glossy magazine under new editor Janice Min, owned by Eldridge Industries. The daily-print-trade model that Mika had been investing $5 million to expand globally was effectively discontinued within three years of the interview.
Daily Variety similarly ended its daily print edition in 2013. The entire daily-trade-print category was effectively eliminated within six years of Mika’s “defying gravity” framing.
The Hollywood Reporter has continued under multiple subsequent ownership cycles, most recently the 2020 Penske Media acquisition. The 2007 piece reads now as one of the more poignant documented moments of pre-collapse print-trade optimism.
Original report archived on the Wayback Machine.