Yes, American veteran entertainment journalist Nikki Finke founded Deadline in 2006.
She joined LA Weekly as its “Deadline Hollywood” columnist in 2002, writing about the business, politics and culture of the media and entertainment industry.
Finke launched Deadline Hollywood Daily in March 2006 to report breaking entertainment news than her weekly newspaper column and purchased the domain name for $14, per Deadline.com.
The Deadline was cemented into Hollywood’s media consciousness for her blanket coverage of and myriad scoops about the 2007-08 writers strike.
Following the purchase of Deadline Hollywood in 2009 by Penske’s PMC (then known as Mail.com Media Corporation), Finke became its Editor-in-Chief and general manager. PMC went on to control all three of Hollywood’s major trade publications: Deadline, Variety and THR.
In 2010, Finke ranked No. 79 on Forbes’ list of The World’s Most Powerful Women.”
Nikki Finke had issues with PMC founder and chairman Penske, and then she left Deadline in 2013.
In 2015, Finke launched HollywoodDementia.com, a site dedicated to fictional tales about Hollywood. She entered into a first-look production deal with HBO for material from the site.
From 2011 to 2021, she served as a judge for the Mirror Awards competition, which celebrates excellence in media industry reporting.
Prior the establishing Deadline, she worked for a couple of media outlets: as an Associated Press foreign correspondent in Moscow and London, a Newsweek correspondent in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and a Los Angeles Times staff writer covering entertainment and features. She was West Coast Editor and Hollywood columnist first for the New York Observer and then for New York Magazine.
Nikki Finke died in Boca Raton, Florida, on October 9, 2022, aged 68, after a long illness.