By Owen Reyes · Originally reported by Richard Horgan (2011) · Wayback archive →
In early October 2011, Tom O’Neil — the awards-prediction journalist who had been running TheEnvelope.com under LA Times branding — announced he was taking his Gold Derby site back independent.
Then
O’Neil had been running Gold Derby for years before partnering with the LA Times. By late 2011, the partnership had run its useful life. The LA Times’ post-bankruptcy restructuring was shrinking the kinds of editorial partnerships the paper had taken on during the optimistic late-2000s digital expansion. Gold Derby’s value proposition was specific: detailed awards-prediction tracking, expert panels polling veteran awards journalists, year-round Oscars and Emmys handicapping.
Now
Gold Derby has, fifteen years on, become one of the most-cited awards-prediction sites in the entertainment press. O’Neil sold the site to PMC in 2018 — joining the same PMC portfolio that includes Variety, Deadline, and THR — and the site continues under PMC ownership with O’Neil remaining involved as editor. The awards-prediction category Gold Derby helped define has expanded substantially across the rest of the trades.