By Owen Reyes · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Richard Horgan on FishbowlLA, March 2013
In mid-March 2013, FishbowlLA covered Sean Phillips — a Yahoo Movies general manager and editor-in-chief — moving over to The Hollywood Reporter, joining the trade’s film team alongside Gregg Kilday, Alex Ben Block, Borys Kit, and the rest of the THR film operation. The original framing tracked the digital-to-trade personnel move.
Then
The March 2013 Phillips hire was characteristic of the Janice Min-era Hollywood Reporter’s editorial build-out. Min’s relaunched HR had been substantially investing in editorial talent across the film, television, and business beats; bringing in a Yahoo Movies executive — someone with substantial digital-media-product experience — was part of the trade’s effort to strengthen its digital operation alongside the glossy print weekly.
The THR film team Phillips was joining was substantial. Gregg Kilday was a longtime film-and-awards writer; Alex Ben Block was a veteran entertainment-business journalist; Borys Kit was — and remains — one of the trade’s leading film-development scoop reporters. The film desk was one of the core editorial operations of the relaunched HR.
The Yahoo Movies-to-Hollywood-Reporter direction of the move was itself a small marker of the era. In 2013, the established entertainment trades were still substantial destinations — a digital-media executive moving from a major web portal’s movies vertical to a trade-press film operation was a lateral-or-upward move in the editorial hierarchy of the moment.
Now
The Hollywood Reporter has continued through subsequent ownership cycles, including the 2020 Penske Media acquisition. The Janice Min editorial era ended in 2017 when she left to launch Ankler Media; the HR film operation has continued through subsequent editorial regimes.
Borys Kit has continued as one of THR’s leading film-development reporters across the entire interval. Gregg Kilday and Alex Ben Block both continued substantial entertainment-journalism careers.
Yahoo Movies — the operation Phillips moved from — has been substantially diminished across the years. Yahoo itself went through the 2017 Verizon acquisition, the merger into Oath, and the 2021 sale to Apollo Global Management; the broader Yahoo content-vertical strategy was substantially wound down. The Yahoo Movies vertical that was a meaningful digital-entertainment operation in 2013 is no longer a significant entity.
The 2013 piece reads now as a small documented moment of entertainment-media personnel movement — a digital-portal-to-trade-press move, captured during the Janice Min HR build-out, and a small marker of an era when the established trades were still substantial enough to draw talent from the major web portals.
Original report archived on the Wayback Machine.