Nikki Finke is well-known as Hollywood’s most powerful blogger. The former LA Times reporter turned to blogging in 2001, and used a combination of her contacts, and an ascerbic writing style to blaze a trail through Hollywood and upend traditional media in the process. For years, Ms. Finke’s power has always been assumed, but today we have a better look at the anatomy of her impact in the Sony emails that were released last year, and posted at Wikileaks.
As a momentary aside, it has never been officially revealed just how Wikileaks got hold of the giant batch, except that the group has been on media website after media website for a while now. Famed lawyer David Boies’ letter asking the media to ignore the Wikipedia set was good for about two days, or until it was found that Ben Affleck was trying to hide that one of his ancestors was a slave owner. After that, it was as if no one had ever heard of David Boies. So with that, this blogger presses on.
There’s a large set of emails that refer to communications between Finke and Sony staff, but what’s most interesting is how Sony would react if she printed something they didn’t like. In one instance involving a headline “Sony Pictures Losing Its Faith-Based African-American Studio Executive” and the rumored departure of Devon Franklin, which did not happen, one exec Charles Sipkins, said “She started reporting about three weeks ago. She didn’t call us. Some of the language from DeVon’s release is in Nikki’s story.
That was in response to another Sony master, Doug Belgrad, who wrote “This is really frustrating.
When did Nikki start reporting again? Did she call anybody to ask for comment? Let’s deal with other outlets and get our story out there the right way. But let’s move fast, since she’s not widely read anymore and we can hopefully have most of the community read the right version of the story.”
The details aside, it’s clear that Sony was running in fear of how Nikki Finke could damage their message with one blog post.
Stay tuned.
Zennie Abraham | Zennie Abraham or “Zennie62” is the founder of Zennie62Media which consists of zennie62blog.com and a multimedia blog news aggregator and video network, and 78-blog network, with social media and content development services and consulting. Zennie is a pioneer video blogger, YouTube Partner, social media practitioner, game developer, and pundit. Note: news aggregator content does not reflect the personal views of Mr. Abraham.