You gotta love the gratitude and moxy of reporter Nikki Finke. Not only does she get an 8,000 word piece written on her in the venerable New Yorker, but then once the piece runs, she trounces the magazine basically saying she hoodwinked the magazine in a piece called, “Hollywood Manipulated The New Yorker.”
“I’m too superficial to read The New Yorker because it’s so unrelentingly boring. Even the cartoons suck these days. So back in 2008, soon after the writers strike ended, I said no when The New Yorker first approached me to cooperate for a profile. Fast forward to this summer, when the mag was desperate to liven up this week’s dullsville “Money Issue” with some Tinseltown mockery.”
“As I expected, it’s an amusing caricature, only occasionally true but hardly insightful,” Finke adds. Guess she doesn’t need to be humble or gracious about anything, but Finke continues to prove, while a good reporter, her abject demeanor is never going to win any personality contests and if she ever does fail or even stumble there will always be legion of folks waiting to indulge in schadenfreude. Is that any way to lead a life?
Being a reporter can mean being an asshole in the sense that your obligation should be to the story and not necessarily the people you’re talking to (how many bloggers are “friends,” with filmmakers, have their emails and then just push their agendas along?). Essentially you shouldn’t be a reporter to make friends, but Finke takes that dictum to a whole other level. One can be tough and impartial and detached, but there are also other ways of conducting yourself that don’t make you feel like taking a morality shower afterwards.
What a cunt.
She's not here to make friends.
"She's not here to make friends."
reality tv cliche to the rescue. also, theplaylist isn't exactly known for its charm, either.
Seriously though, in reading the entirety of her reply, she made some valid points:
"As I expected, it's an amusing caricature, only occasionally true but hardly insightful. Still, I'm relieved that The New Yorker didn't lay a glove on me. I found Tad Friend, who covers Hollywood from Brooklyn, easy to manipulate, as was David Remnick, whom I enjoyed bitchslapping throughout but especially during the very slipshod factchecking process. New Yorker logo(Those draconian Conde Nast budget cuts have deflated the infamous hubris of this New Jersey dentist's son.) But I wasn't the only one able to knock out a lot of negative stuff in the article without even one lawyer letter, email, or phone call. I witnessed how The New Yorker really bent over for Hollywood. NYC power publicist Steven Rubenstein succeeded in deleting every reference to Paramount's Brad Grey. Warner Bros and Universal and DreamWorks and William Morris/Endeavor and Summit Entertainment execs and flacks and consultants also had their way with the mag. (They were even laughing about it. When I asked one PR person what it took to convince Tad to take out whole portions of the article, the response was, "I swallowed.") At Harvey Weinstein's personal behest, his description of me as a "cunt" became "jerk". (Then the article would have contained two references to me as a "cunt" in addition to its four uses of "fuck". Si Newhouse must be so proud…) And so on. Now remember, readers: you, too, can make The New Yorker your buttboy. Just act like a cunt and treat Remnick like a putz and don't give a fuck."
— See, it doesn't matter that she's not humble, what matters is that she's brutally honest.
But, I see your point. I'd hate to be the one on the receiving end of her shoddy manners.