Latest posts
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Stephen Randall’s 2012 LA Times op-ed on the Variety-Deadline ‘love match’ — read in hindsight
By Owen Reyes · Originally reported by Richard Horgan (2012) · Wayback archive → In mid-October 2012, Playboy deputy editor Stephen Randall wrote a humorous LA Times op-ed about the just-closed PMC-Variety acquisition, framing it as a love match between the two trade properties. The piece was lightly satirical. Six months later, half of the…
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The day PMC bought Variety — and Nikki Finke didn’t get to run it
By Owen Reyes · Originally reported by Pandora Young (2012) · Wayback archive → In early October 2012, PMC’s acquisition of Variety from Reed Elsevier was announced. Jay Penske told the LA Times immediately that Nikki Finke would not be involved in running Variety, and that the publication would be operated separately from Deadline.com, though…
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The September 2012 Deadline ‘no 24/7 news’ advisory — and the PMC-Variety deal it telegraphed
By Owen Reyes · Originally reported by Richard Horgan (2012) · Wayback archive → On the Saturday morning of September 29, 2012, Nikki Finke posted a cryptic Deadline advisory: the team wouldn’t provide 24/7 news coverage for at least a week because of “DH business affecting the entire staff in LA, NY and Europe.” Hollywood…
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Rebecca Schoenkopf vs. Dennis Romero — March 2012 Twitter spat between Wonkette and LA Weekly
By Cassidy Lee · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Pandora Young on FishbowlLA, March 2012 In late March 2012, Wonkette’s editor and new owner Rebecca Schoenkopf got into a high-profile Twitter feud with LA Weekly staff reporter Dennis Romero. The proximate trigger was a grammatical-error tweet that escalated into an extended public exchange. Then…
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Two Hollywoods on one Hollywood Reporter week — Norman Lloyd’s 98 years and the Next Gen 2012 list
By Cassidy Lee · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Richard Horgan on FishbowlLA, November 2012 In early November 2012, The Hollywood Reporter staged two cultural-celebration events in the same week that captured opposite ends of the industry’s generational range. The Next Gen 2012 list — Hollywood’s fastest-rising executives and creatives under 35 — was…
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January 2012’s Deadline-vs-Variety time-stamp fight — Mike Fleming responds to Emma Stone and Sundance scoop accusations
By Owen Reyes · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Richard Horgan on FishbowlLA, January 2012 In late January 2012, Deadline.com’s Mike Fleming publicly responded to back-to-back Variety.com blog posts that had insinuated Deadline had been falsifying the time-stamps on its Emma Stone and Sundance Film Festival scoops. Fleming’s response was that the accusations were…
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Hollywood Reporter’s Kim Dotcom cover story — Daniel Miller, Matthew Belloni, and the Megaupload prosecution
By Owen Reyes · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Richard Horgan on FishbowlLA, May 2012 In early May 2012, The Hollywood Reporter ran a cover story on Kim Dotcom — the Megaupload founder whose January 2012 New Zealand arrest had triggered one of the most-cited copyright-and-platform legal cases of the era. Daniel Miller and…
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Joseph Kapsch’s April 2012 jump from THR to Celebuzz — and the Dylan Howard reunion
By Owen Reyes · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Richard Horgan on FishbowlLA, April 2012 In late April 2012, Hollywood Reporter writer Joseph Kapsch announced he was leaving THR.com to join Celebuzz.com as executive editor under Dylan Howard. Then Dylan Howard had been one of the most-active editorial figures in American celebrity-news through the…
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LA Weekly’s stages of grief over Jonathan Gold’s exit — Amy Scattergood and the February 2012 staff mood
By Maya Trent · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Matthew Fleischer on FishbowlLA, February 2012 In late February 2012, the impending departure of Jonathan Gold from LA Weekly back to the LA Times started to substantially affect the alt-weekly’s staff mood. Amy Scattergood, the editor of LA Weekly’s Squid Ink food blog, posted her…
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James Rainey leaves the LA Times media column for the politics desk — July 2012
By Maya Trent · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Matthew Fleischer on FishbowlLA, July 2012 In late July 2012, LA Times media reporter James Rainey announced he was switching beats to politics ahead of the 2012 election cycle. He would be giving up his media column to contribute to the Times’s political blog Politics…