In late June 2012 Variety.com editor Chris Krewson — half of the duo, with Josh Dickey, that ran Variety’s digital news desk and most recently the public BlogDogger watchdog feature — left to take the equivalent role at THR.com. Three months later Variety was sold to PMC. Krewson’s decision read very differently afterward than it did the day it was announced.
Then
Krewson started as THR.com editor the day after the announcement. Janice Min’s announcement framed the hire as continuing momentum: “Chris brings a strong news metabolism that will continue to drive growth at THR.com. As our digital footprint continues to grow, his contribution will be invaluable.” Krewson’s own statement noted he was “thrilled to be joining THR, especially at a time when the brand’s on the move.”
The original FishbowlLA framing read it as a wound for Variety. Krewson had been one of the most visible faces of the Variety digital operation, including the BlogDogger watchdog work that had defined the trade’s combative relationship with Deadline. Losing him to THR — and to the still-rising Min era at THR — looked like the kind of strategic loss that competitive trades try not to absorb.
Now
Variety was sold by Reed Elsevier to Penske Media Corporation in October 2012, three months after the Krewson hire. The PMC era at Variety completely reset the strategic context. The paywall came down. The digital operation was rebuilt. The trade caught back up with THR competitively, and by the mid-2010s the rivalry was structurally different — both because of PMC’s strategy and because PMC eventually bought THR too in 2020.
Krewson continued at THR for a stretch before moving on to subsequent senior editorial roles in regional and national news. He has been one of the more well-traveled news-and-digital-editor figures in U.S. media, with subsequent roles at the LION Publishers organization (Local Independent Online News Publishers) where he has been a leading voice in the independent-local-news space.
The 2012 hire Min landed looks now less like the strategic blow it appeared to be at the time, and more like a snapshot of the year when the competitive structure of the trades was about to fundamentally reset under PMC. The Krewson-to-THR move was one of the last clean hires-across-the-rivalry before PMC’s eventual acquisition of THR made the rivalry corporate-internal.
Original report archived on the Wayback Machine: June 2012 snapshot