The Hollywood Reporter is an American
trade publication of the
entertainment industry. During the
last century it was one of the two major publications — the other
being
Variety. Today
both
newspapers cover what is now more
broadly called the entertainment industry.
History
The Hollywood Reporter was Hollywood's first daily
entertainment industry trade paper. It began as a daily film
publication, then added television coverage in the 1950s and began
in the late 1980s to cover intellectual property industries.
Founder
William R. Wilkerson published the first issue of the
Hollywood Reporter on September 3, 1930. This daily magazine
reported on movies, studios and personalities in an outrageously
candid style. Through its outspoken pages Wilkerson became one of
the town's most colorful and controversial figures. He began each
issue with a self-penned editorial entitled "Tradeviews", which
exposed corrupt studio practices. "Tradeviews" went on to become
one of the most widely read daily columns in the industry. The
upstart publisher also employed hard-ball tactics to solicit
advertising. Studios were literally blackmailed into giving their
support. If they refused, he ordered a complete editorial blackout
on all their material—from press releases to film reviews. The
corporate moguls eventually banded together to deal with
The
Reporter. They refused Wilkerson all advertising support and
deprived him of news from their studios. They even hired extra
employees to burn The Hollywood Reporter when it was delivered
every morning at their front gates. At the height of the battle,
his reporters were barred from every lot in town. Wilkerson told
them to climb over the studio walls and sift through executives'
garbage. These tactics produced a flood of incriminating news,
which Wilkerson cheerfully printed. President
Franklin D. Roosevelt had the paper airmailed
daily to his desk at the White House
. By 1936,
The Hollywood Reporter
had become something even the most prescient studio heads never
anticipated—a power that rivaled their own.
The Hollywood Blacklist
Wilkerson believed that the
Screen
Writers Guild was one of the prime Communist strongholds in all
of Hollywood. He used his TradeView column to publicize the
"Communist Takeover" of the guild dating as early as 1938.
Throughout the thirteen year Screen Writers Guild ban of its
members advertising their services in trade papers, Wilkerson would
not allow screenwriter credits in the Reporters film reviews.
On Monday, July 29, 1946, Wilkerson published his TradeView
entitled "A VOTE FOR JOE STALIN". It contained the first industry
names on what later became the infamous
Hollywood Blacklist—
Dalton Trumbo, Maurice Rapf,
Lester Cole,
Howard
Koch, Harold Buchman, John Wexley, Ring Lardner Jr., Harold
Salemson, Henry Meyers, Theodore Strauss and
John Howard Lawson.
Wilkerson soon went after Cole, who was the first Vice President of
the Screen Writers Guild. Here, Wilkerson would be the first to ask
the two questions that would ring throughout the nation for the
next decade: "Are you a member of the Writers Guild?" and "Are you
a member of the Communist Party of the United States?" On Monday
August 19, 1946, Wilkerson wrote:
FOR THE PURPOSE of trying to tag the activity of the
Screen-Writers Guild generally, and particularly its action
proposing to our State Department that the U.S.-French film
agreement be renegotiated to give "greater benefit" to the French
film writers, we would like to ask Mr. Lester Cole, who authored
the motion for SWG passage:
- "Are you a Communist? Do you hold card number 46805 in what is
known as the Northwest Section of the Communist party, a division
of the party made up mostly of West Coast Commies?"
In an editorial entitled "RED BEACH-HEAD!" on Tuesday August 20,
1946, Wilkerson took aim at Hollywood writer John Howard Lawson. On
Wednesday August 21, 1946, in an editorial entitled "Hywd’s Red
Commissars!", Wilkerson skewered
John
Leech, Emmet Lavery, Oliver H. P. Garrett, Harold Buchman,
Maurice Rapf, and
William
Pomerance. On September 12, 1946, Wilkerson printed "the list"
of names that would be plucked by The
House Committee on
Un-American Activities (HUAC) for their 1947 hearings.
Wilkerson used two different colors to identify two different
levels of participation in Communism. "Red" indicated that the
individual was a card-carrying communist. "Pink" meant that an
individual simply had communist sympathies.
The list included:
Known in the beginning as "Billy’s List", it quickly became
"Billy’s Blacklist", referring to the color of the publisher’s
magazine ink. Wilkerson's list would eventually evolve into the
infamous "Blacklist" that became the backbone of the May 8, October
20 and October 27 hearings. These hearings led to citations for
contempt being issued by the
United
States on November 24, 1947.
The list centered on "the individuals
working in the American film industry
who became victims of the Blacklist as a
result of the anti-Communist fervor
of the Cold War Period in the United States
, commonly referred to as the McCarthy era". "The HUAC followed the
example of the Joint Fact Finding Committee of the California
Legislature (the Tenney Committee) which held hearings on the
perceived Communist influence in Hollywood
since 1943. The
1946 elections saw a return of a
Republican majority in
Congress" and the HUAC became a vehicle for
politicians who opposed the
New Deal tradition of
social democracy and reform.
Will Geer, from the TV series "
The Waltons", was another Blacklisted actor in
Hollywood.
"The beginnings of the Theatricum Botanicum
stretch back to the early 1950s when Will Geer, one of the many
actors victimized by the McCarthy Era Blacklisting, opened a
theatre for Blacklisted actors and folk singers on his Topanga
property."
Wilkerson would do what no other publisher in America had dared to
do prior to August 1946—publish the identities of card-carrying
communists, their party member numbers and pseudonyms on his front
page.
Ownership changes
Wilkerson ran
The Hollywood Reporter until his death in
1962, when his wife,
Tichi
Wilkerson, took over as publisher and editor-in-chief. She sold
the paper on April 11, 1988 to trade publishers BPI for $26.7
million. Teri Ritzer was the last editor under Wilkerson. She began
the paper's modernization by bringing newspaper editors into what
was essentially a Hollywood wannabe newsroom.
BPI's publisher, Robert J. Dowling, brought in Alex Ben Block in
1990 and editorial quality of both news and specials was steadily
improved. Ritzer and Block dampened much of the rah-rah coverage
and
cronyism that had infected the paper
under Wilkerson. After Ben Block left, former film editor at
Variety, Anita Busch,
was brought in as editor between 1999 and 2001. Busch was credited
with making the paper competitive with
Variety. Dowling
helmed the paper until he was forced to retire during corporate
changes in late 2005. Tony Uphoff assumed the publisher position in
November 2005.
The Reporter was acquired, along
with the rest of the assets of VNU, in spring
2006 by a private equity consortium led by Blackstone and KKR, both
with ties to the conservative movement in the United States
. Uphoff was replaced in October 2006 by John
Kilcullen, who was the publisher of
Billboard. Kilcullen
was a defendant in Billboard's infamous "dildo" lawsuit, in which
he was accused of race discrimination and sexual harassment. VNU
settled the suit on the courthouse steps. Kilcullen "exited"
Nielsen in February 2008 "to pursue his passion as an
entrepreneur."Matthew King, vice president for content and
audience, editorial director Howard Burns, and executive editor
Peter Pryor left the paper in a wave of layoffs in December 2006;
editor Cynthia Littleton, widely respected throughout the industry,
reported directly to Kilcullen.
The Reporter absorbed
another blow when Littleton left her position for an editorial job
at
Variety in March, 2007. Web editor Glenn Abel also left
after 16 years with the paper.
In January 2007 VNU was purchased by a private equity consortium
and renamed
The Nielsen Company,
whose properties include
Billboard,
AdWeek and
A.C. Nielsen. Under
its new leadership, Nielsen is reported to have made a
$5 million investment in
The
Reporter.
In April 2007 industry veteran Eric Mika was named to the
newly-created role of Senior Vice President, Publishing Director of
The Reporter. Having previously served as Senior Vice
President and Managing Director of Nielsen Business Media’s Film
and Performing Arts Group and, before that, as Vice President and
Managing Director for
Variety, Mika assumed responsibility
for the general management of sales, marketing and editorial for
The Hollywood Reporter, as well as the brand’s ancillary
products, events, licensing business and partnerships
In June 2007, Rose Einstein, former Vice President, Advertising
Sales for
Netflix and 25-year veteran of
Reed Business Media, was named to the newly-created role of Vice
President, Associate Publisher to oversee all sales and business
development for
The Reporter.
Then in July 2007
The Reporter named Elizabeth Guider as
its new editor. An 18-year veteran of
Variety, where she
served as Executive Editor, Guider assumed responsibility for the
editorial vision and strategic direction of
The Hollywood
Reporter’s daily and weekly editions, digital content
offerings and executive conferences.
Presence on the web
The Reporter published a primitive "
satellite"
digital edition
in the late 1980s. It became the first daily entertainment trade
paper to start a web site in 1995. Initially the site offered free
news briefs with complete coverage firewalled as a premium (paid)
service. In later years the web site became mostly free as it
became more reliant on ad sales and less on subscribers. The
web site had already gone through a
redesign by the time competitor Daily Variety took to the web. In
2002,
The Reporter’s web site won the
Jesse H. Neal Award for business
journalism.
Today, other
Reporter electronic products include U.S. and
European daily
e-mail editions, a daily East
Coast digital edition, a business
podcast
and a number of
blogs, and a weekly
Korean-language newsletter that reaches nearly 4,000 subscribers in
Korea each day. In June 2007
The Reporter introduced
The Hollywood Reporter, Digital Edition, an online
electronic replica of the daily magazine, available in 12
languages, that also features text-to-voice conversion into six
languages. In October 2007 the publication launched THR Direct, a
free application that provides subscribers with immediate delivery
of customized news, alerts and video from The Hollywood Reporter to
their desktop
The Reporter itself was slow to modernize. The paper still
used vintage
IBM-styled selectric typewriters in
several departments into the early 1990s and was sluggish in
upgrading operations by adding common business equipment such as
computers,
scanners and color printers to
all departments. Archival materials were routinely
microfilmed as late as 1998 rather than
digitized, even though the system to view it was
in storage or broken. Many staff members did not have email several
years after its use became relatively common in business.
In the era of bloggers, cellphone cameras, 24/7 cable business news
and the explosion of information outlets on the
internet, it is possible that one of the trades
will take its daily publication completely online in the near
future.
Current status and legacy
The Hollywood Reporter has been called an institution,
publishing out of the same offices on
Sunset Boulevard for more than a half
century, although by the 1970s the aging offices had become a time
capsule more akin to the 1950s and the paper had clearly outgrown
them.
Today, the offices are in L.A.
's Mid-Wilshire district.
In
November 2007, The Reporter launched its Premier Edition,
a new day-and-date edition of the publication with daily morning
delivery to subscribers in New York
and key
cities across the East Coast. As a result of the
move to regional printing, the Premier Edition is also available on
newsstands throughout Manhattan
each morning from Monday through
Friday.
The Hollywood Reporter's conferences and award shows
include the Key Art Awards, which aim to recognize the best in
movie marketing and advertising. Its annual Women in Entertainment:
Power 100 issue and event is a somewhat controversial if not
subjective ranking of female entertainment executives. It’s annual
"Next Generation" special issue and event honors 35 up-and-coming
executives in entertainment that are 35 years or younger. The
paper's influential celebrity marketability rating system, Star
Power, will be published again in 2008, after a hiatus.
Editors and reporters today
The Hollywood Reporter has a staff of roughly 200.
Today, editors and reporters number more than 60, with another 50
staffers scattered in key locales around the world, having
downsized when VNU absorbed BPI Communications in 2000. VNU was
renamed
Nielsen Business Media in
2007. The paper publishes only on weekdays, although
The
Reporter has a weekly international edition published each
Friday and in the early 1970s, briefly aired a TV show.
It is
interesting to note that during the "golden age" of Hollywood
film and television, The Reporter was
seldom staffed with more than 20 people. It was chiefly in
the media boom of the late 1970s, 1980s and 1990s that the employee
roster increased.
In addition to hiring Eric Mika, Rose Eintstein and Elizabeth
Guider, The Reporter hired the following staff in 2007:
- Todd Cunningham, former assistant managing editor of the LA
Business Journal, as National Editor for The Hollywood Reporter:
Premier Edition
- Steven Zeitchik as Senior Writer, based in New York, where he
provide news analysis and features for the Premiere Edition
- Melissa Grego, former managing editor of TV Week, as Editor of
HollywoodReporter.com
- Jonathan Landreth as the new Asian bureau chief, in addition to
13 new writers across Asia
However, staffing levels began to drop again in 2008. In April,
Nielsen Business Media eliminated between 40 and 50 editorial staff
positions at
The Hollywood Reporter and its sister
publications:
Adweek,
Brandweek,
Editor &
Publisher and
Mediaweek. In December, another 12
editorial positions were cut at the trade paper.
In addition, 2008 saw
substantial turnover in the online department: THR.com Editor
Melissa Grego left her position in July to become executive editor
of Broadcast & Cable, and Managing Editor Scott McKim left to
become a new media manager at Knox College
. With the entertainment industry as a whole
shrinking, "Hollywood studios have cut more than $20 million from
the Motion Picture Association of America budget this year. The
resulting staff and program reductions are expected to permanently
shrink the scope and size of the six-studio trade and advocacy
group." , staffing at THR in 2008 saw even further cutbacks for
with "names from today's tragic bloodletting of The Hollywood
Reporter's staff" adding up quickly in the hard economic times at
the end of 2008. "The trade has not only been thin, but only
publishing digital version 19 days this holiday season. Film
writers Leslie Simmons, Carolyn Giardina, Gregg Goldstein, plus
lead TV critic Barry Garron and TV reporter Kimberly Nordyke, also
special issues editor Randee Dawn Cohen out of New York and
managing editor Harley Lond and international department editor Hy
Hollinger, plus Dan Evans, Lesley Goldberg, Michelle Belaski, James
Gonzalez were among those chopped from the masthead.
Competition with Variety
In March 2007,
The Hollywood Reporter surpassed
Variety to achieve the
largest total distribution of any entertainment daily.
Variety makes good use of its well-branded heritage as
part of the Hollywood scene and culture, not just an observer
reporting on it.
The Reporter, on the other hand, is often
considered by industry insiders as outside that circle looking in
and continues to struggle with branding an
image for itself, in spite of being established in
Hollywood three years before
Variety. For instance,
Variety's "brand" continues to perpetuate awareness of
their place in Hollywood culture in such old films as
Singin' in the Rain,
Yankee Doodle Dandy and
TV shows like
I Love Lucy,
Make Room For Daddy and
others.
The Reporter has tried to do the same in recent
years, with recent placements in TV shows like
Entourage, which also prominently
features
Variety.
Daily Variety and
The
Hollywood Reporter both are located on
Wilshire Boulevard along the
well-trafficked "Miracle Mile". Staffers often migrate between the
papers. There is a history of
bad blood
between the rivals bordering on the obsessive, sometimes petty and
occasionally myopic.
Variety was long established as an
entertainment trade paper in vaudeville
circles, Tin Pan
Alley
and in the theatre district of New York City
, but it was The Hollywood Reporter that
began covering the developing film business in Hollywood in
1930. Variety did not start its Hollywood edition
until 1933.
The Hollywood Reporter maintains a business association
with the home entertainment trade publication
Home Media Magazine, which is owned
by Questex Media Group. The alliance includes an exchange of
stories when the need arises, and gives
The Reporter
access into the home entertainment trade, which
Variety
enjoys with its sister publication, the Reed-owned
Video
Business.
Today, news and analysis from
The Reporter is also
distributed through an exclusive partnership with
Reuters entertainment wire services, which reaches
11 million subscribers each day.
The Reporter also reaches about 10 million readers each
day through the Nielsen Entertainment News Wire, including the
Chicago Sun Times,
Newsday,
San Jose Mercury News,
Arizona Republic,
Philadelphia Daily
News and
Toronto
Star.
See also
Notes
- The Hollywood Blacklist, 1947-2002
- Lev, P. (2007). Transforming the screen: 1950–1959. History of
the American cinema / Charles Harpole, general ed, Vol. 7. Berkeley
[u.a.]: Univ. of California Press. p. 65
- About The Theatricum
- Hollywood's Version of Trade Wars
- Folio Magazine
- CourtTV
- DeadlineHollywoodDaily
- (MediaBistro, 11/6/07)
- Nielsen press release 4/23/07
- Nielsen press release, 6/25/07
- Nielsen press release, 7/30/07
- press release 7/18/07
- Press release 10/29/07
- PaidContent, April 9, 2008.
- Deadline Hollywood, Dec. 4, 2008.
- Broadcast & Cable, July 8, 2008
-
http://uk.reuters.com/article/industryNews/idUKTRE5220TJ20090303
-
http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/layoffs-at-hollywood-reporter-12-the-staff/
-
http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/layoffs-at-hollywood-reporter-12-the-staff/
- ABC Publisher’s Statement, as compared to Variety and Daily
Variety, March, 2007
External links