The Hollywood Reporter: История и Влияние

American magazine and website

The Hollywood Reporter (THR) is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Hollywood film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade paper, and in 2010 switched to a weekly large format print magazine with a revamped website. As of 2020, the day to day operations of the company are handled by Penske Media Corporation through a joint venture with Eldridge Industries.

The Hollywood Reporter was founded in 1930 by William R. "Billy" Wilkerson (1890–1962) as Hollywood's first daily entertainment trade newspaper. The first edition appeared on September 3, 1930, and featured Wilkerson's front page "Tradeviews" column, which became influential. The newspaper appeared Monday to Saturday for the first 10 years, except for a brief period, then Monday to Friday from 1940. Wilkerson used caustic articles and gossip to generate publicity and got noticed by the studio bosses in New York and some studio lots tried to ban the paper. In 1932, Variety sued The Hollywood Reporter, alleging that THR was plagiarizing information from Variety following its publication in New York on Tuesdays, by way of phoning or wiring the information back to Hollywood, so that THR could publish the information before Variety reached Hollywood three days later on Friday. Then, in 1933, Variety started its own daily Hollywood edition, Daily Variety, to cover the film industry. Wilkerson became friends with Howard Hughes and the paper wrote many favorable stories about him and his film plans. In return, Hughes, in addition to advertising revenue, also provided financial assistance to the paper when necessary. Wilkerson's wife, Tichi Wilkerson Kassel, took over as publisher and editor in chief when her husband died.

From the late 1930s, Wilkerson used The Hollywood Reporter to push the view that the industry was a communist stronghold. In particular, he opposed the screenplay writers' trade union, the Screen Writers Guild, which he called the "Red Beachhead". In 1946 the Guild considered creating an American Authors' Authority to hold copyright for writers, instead of ownership passing to the studios. Wilkerson devoted his "Tradeviews" column to the issue on July 29, 1946, headlined "A Vote for Joe Stalin." He went to confession before publishing it, knowing the damage it would cause, but was apparently encouraged by the priest to go ahead with it. The column contained the first industry names, including Dalton Trumbo and Howard Koch, on what became the Hollywood blacklist, known as "Billy's list". Eight of the 11 people Wilkerson named were among the "Hollywood Ten" who were blacklisted after hearings in 1947 by the House Un American Activities Committee. When Wilkerson died, his THR obituary said that he had "named names, pseudonyms and card numbers and was widely credited with being chiefly responsible for preventing communists from becoming entrenched in Hollywood production."

On April 11, 1988, Tichi Wilkerson Kassel sold the paper to BPI Communications, owned by Affiliated Publications, for $26.7 million. Robert J. Dowling became THR president in 1988, and editor in chief and publisher in 1991. In March 2006 a private equity consortium led by Blackstone and KKR, both with ties to the conservative movement in the United States, acquired THR along with the other assets of VNU. 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. From 1988 to 2014, Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter were both located on Wilshire Boulevard, along Miracle Mile. In March 2007, The Hollywood Reporter surpassed Daily Variety to achieve the largest total distribution of any entertainment daily.

In December 2009, Prometheus Global Media, a newly formed company formed by Pluribus Capital Management and Guggenheim Partners, and chaired by Jimmy Finkelstein, CEO of News Communications, parent of political journal The Hill, acquired THR from Nielsen Business Media. It pledged to invest in the brand and grow the company. Richard Beckman, formerly of Condé Nast, was appointed as CEO. In 2010, Beckman recruited Janice Min, the former editor in chief of Us Weekly, as editorial director to "eviscerate" the existing daily trade paper and reinvent it as a glossy, large format weekly magazine. The Hollywood Reporter relaunched with a weekly print edition and a revamped website that enabled it to break news. Eight months after its initial report, The New York Times took note of the many scoops THR had generated, adding that the new glossy format seemed to be succeeding with its "rarefied demographic", stating: "They managed to change the subject by going weekly The large photos, lush paper stock and great design are a kind of narcotic here." In 2011, Deadline Hollywood, a property of Penske Media Corporation, sued The Hollywood Reporter for more than $5 million, alleging copyright infringement. In 2013, THRs parent company settled the suit. According to The Wall Street Journal, "The lawsuit [was] widely viewed in Hollywood as a proxy for the bitter war for readers and advertising dollars The two sides agreed on a statement reading in part: 'Prometheus admits that The Hollywood Reporter copied source code from Penske Media Corporation's Web site www. tvline. com; Prometheus and The Hollywood Reporter have apologized to Penske Media. By February 2013 the Times returned to THR, filing a report on a party for Academy Award nominees the magazine had hosted at the Los Angeles restaurant Spago. Noting the crowd of top celebrities in attendance, the Times alluded to the fact that many Hollywood insiders were now referring to THR as "the new Vanity Fair". Ad sales since Min's hiring were up more than 50%, while traffic to the magazine's website had grown by 800%. In January 2014, Janice Min was promoted to President/Chief Creative Officer of the Entertainment Group of Guggenheim Media, giving her oversight of THR and its sister brand Billboard. Min is joined by co president John Amato, who is responsible for business initiatives. Guggenheim Partners announced on December 17, 2015, that it would sell the Prometheus media properties to its executive Todd Boehly. The company was sold to Eldridge Industries in February 2017. On February 1, 2018, Eldridge Industries announced the merger of its media properties with Media Rights Capital to form Valence Media (later rebranded in 2020 as simply MRC).