You've Been Finke'd

We pity the fool who gets in the crosshairs of our favorite Hollywood muckraker, Nikki Finke, who operates out of our mother ship, LA Weekly, and whose popular, daily Deadline Hollywood column we link to with gusto from our website. Case in point: MarketWatch Media Web columnist Jon Friedman.

"Finke's prickly distrust for (figures of authority) practically borders on disrespect, if not outright disdain," writes Friedman, who also says "nobody writes tougher stuff than this LA Weekly scribe." Finke says she's different than other reporters who cover the movie industry because she focuses on business, not celebrity, and because she could care less about what Tinseltown royalty thinks of her: "I write mean--end of story. I'm unapologetic about it--end of story. I watch out for the shareholders--end of story."

Which is why we love her--end of story.

But as Finke responds on her blog, she considers Friedman's column a hit piece, and that he "wouldn't have dared write an article like this about a male business journalist working for a mainstream newspaper." She also accuses him of attributing his own statements to her and printing her off-the-record remarks.