This is probably not the way Variety wanted to start 2010. This morning it was announced that Nikki Finke’s Deadline/Hollywood has poached one of Variety’s best scoopers, Mike Fleming, to handle the New York branch of the website.
Variety, at one time an important industry read, has had a long slide in the past couple of years into irrelevance with a waning readership and tired content. In the last month, they have implemented a misguided paywall strategy for their website which would make sense if they actually had anything to report. But the fact is Variety has simply been unable to adapt to the web, as independent bloggers and other established film sites are breaking news as it happens or reporting exclusive content while old school media are still getting their ducks in a row. Fleming was by far Variety’s most valuable asset for premium content, and with him gone, that $248 annual subscription fee suddenly looks even more ridiculous than it already did.
However, Fleming being added to the Deadline/Hollywood team isn’t necessarily a slam dunk. As Anne Thompson points out, Fleming is not a blogger, but a newsman. Finke’s method of mudslinging-TOLDJA-post-it-and-edit-it-later reporting may not jive with Fleming whose network of sources trust him not to hang them out dry. As Finke is only interested in being there first, facts and people be damned, it remains to be seen if Fleming will be the right fit as Finke, whose site now answers to Jay Penske, is in need of traffic and advertising first and foremost.
What this means for Variety’s competitor, The Hollywood Reporter, remains to be seen. While they have weathered the internet storm a lot better than Variety, they have been rumored to be going behind a paywall as well. However, having just witnessed their competitor’s best reporter jumping ship to a site that won’t hide his content behind a login screen, The Hollywood Reporter and other similar industry sites, may want to rethink their strategy.
