By Jordan Vega · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Matthew Fleischer on FishbowlLA, March 2011
In early March 2011, FishbowlLA covered a trade-press hire: Andrew Wallenstein was leaving PaidContent to become Variety’s new TV editor. The original framing flagged the subtext — a Hollywood Reporter alum landing at the archrival trade.
Then
Andrew Wallenstein moved from a senior-editor role at PaidContent, the digital-media news site, to become the TV editor at Variety. Variety group editor Timothy M. Gray announced the hire as part of an effort to deepen the trade’s reporting bench, with Wallenstein assigned to provide analytical features across Variety’s platforms and to expand its coverage of the digital-media marketplace.
The subtext FishbowlLA flagged: Wallenstein had spent eight years at The Hollywood Reporter, leaving his post as online editor in October 2010 — a departure that coincided with Janice Min’s arrival to remake THR. A THR alum landing at archrival Variety carried a little extra trade-war flavor. The blog also needled Variety for burying news of the hire behind its Variety.com paywall rather than posting it on Showblitz, the trade’s then-new free aggregation site.
The piece was characteristic trade-press inside baseball — a hire, its backstory, and a small dig at the publication’s own digital strategy.
Now
Andrew Wallenstein became one of the most prominent figures at Variety, rising to co-editor-in-chief and then president of content, and serving as a leading voice on the digital-media and streaming beat through the 2010s before moving into the streaming-research world.
Variety itself was acquired by Jay Penske in 2012, the year after this hire — the start of the Penske Media consolidation that reshaped the entertainment trades. The paywall-versus-free tension the 2011 item poked at was substantially resolved when Variety dropped its paywall and went free under Penske ownership.
The 2011 piece reads now as an early step in the career of a journalist who would become central to Variety — captured just before the ownership change that transformed the publication around him.
Original report archived on the Wayback Machine.