By Owen Reyes · Originally reported by Richard Horgan (2011) · Wayback archive →
In mid-January 2011, New York-based showbiz columnist Roger Friedman did something he was already known for at his Showbiz 411 site: name and shame three competitors who he said had picked up his scoops without proper attribution. The “thievery trifecta” called out Deadline.com (Nellie Andreeva on Ricky Gervais), People (a Nicole Kidman item), and TVLine (Michael Ausiello on Regis Philbin).
Then
Friedman had built a reliable column structure at Showbiz 411 — half scoop site, half public-correction operation. The thievery callouts were partly substantive complaint, partly content. The structural issue he was prosecuting was real: when his items showed up at larger outlets without credit, the link-economy norm was being broken.
Now
Roger Friedman has continued at Showbiz 411 through the entire interval — still independent, still running the same scoops-and-corrections model. The site is one of the few sustained independent entertainment-scoop properties from the 2010s that has survived as a standalone operation. Nellie Andreeva became Co-Editor-in-Chief at Deadline in 2017. Michael Ausiello continued at TVLine, which was acquired by PMC in 2017. The attribution norms Friedman was prosecuting have shifted across the decade: PMC’s consolidation of the major trades (Deadline, Variety, THR, IndieWire, TVLine all now in the same corporate house) has removed the inter-competitor framing that the 2011 complaints relied on.
Original report archived on the Wayback Machine.