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''The Hollywood Reporter'' is one of two major Trade Papers of the Film Industry in the United States , the other being '' Variety ''. The Reporter was the entertainment industry's first daily trade paper. It began as a daily film publication, added television coverage in the 1950s and began in the late 1980s to cover all intellectual property industries. In September 1930, former film salesman William R. "Billy" Wilkerson published the debut issue of The Hollywood Reporter. The banner headline read, "INDIE REVOLUTION." Studio chieftains were stunned to find themselves covered by an aggressive independent newspaper, with one famous company going so far as to make bonfires of the latest editions. The smooth-but-tough-talking Wilkerson became a major player in Hollywood, helping develop the Sunset Strip and launching celebrity hot spots Cafe Trocadero and Ciro's. He developed the Flamingo hotel in Las Vegas, partnering at one point with gangster Bugsy Siegel. The Reporter became an institution, publishing out of the same offices on Sunset Boulevard for more than a half century. (Today, the offices are in L.A.'s Mid-Wilshire district.) Shirley MacLaine once paid a visit to the Sunset offices, marching up to a columnist and slapping him over an item he wrote. Wilkerson ran The Reporter until his death in 1962, when his wife Tichi Wilkerson took over as publisher and editor-in-chief. She sold the paper in the late 1980s, when editorial quality significantly improved under editor Teri Ritzer (now a Disney international film executive) and publisher Robert Dowling. Ritzer hired editors with daily newspaper experience, ending much of the rah-rah coverage and cronyism that had infected the paper since Wilkerson's death. Dowling ran the paper until his retirement in late 2005, handing over the reins to the current publisher, Tony Uphoff, in 2006. The Reporter is owned by the Netherlands-based VNU, whose properties include Billboard, Ad Week and A.C. Nielsen. The Reporter's team of editors and reporters numbers more than 60, with another 50 editors, reporters and correspondents spread around the globe. Like Daily Variety, the paper publishes only on week days, although the Reporter's web site essentially produces a Saturday edition. The Hollywood Reporter was the first daily entertainment trade to go online, in late 1995. The Reporter's Web site is widely considered superior to Variety's, but Variety's site has become more aggressive in recent years. In 2002, the Reporter's Web site won the prestigious Jesse H. Neal award for business journalism. Other electronic products include a daily East Coast PDF edition, U.S. and European daily email editions, and the Times Square-like news scroll at the intersection of Hollywood and Highland in Los Angeles. Hollywoodreporter.com aims to be a CNN for the media business, posting showbiz news 24/7 from L.A. and bureaus in New York and Europe. Key players at the Reporter in 2006 were new publisher Tony Uphoff, editor Howard Burns, editorial director Matthew King, Internet editor/exec Glenn Abel and deputy editor Cynthia Littleton. Anne Thompson, a veteran film reporter, brought her Risky Business column to the paper and recently spun it off as a blog. Daily Variety and the Reporter both are located on Wilshire Blvd. Talent often migrates between the papers. There is a history of bad blood between the rivals. Variety editor Peter Bart once sputtered to a reporter, "They're not journalists at all," but he has a long history of recruiting Reporter writers once they've established bylines. Officially at least, the Reporter has taken the high road in the paper war. The trades' circulation figures are about the same -- low in number but sky-high in demographic quality. The Reporter's conferences and award shows include the Key Art Awards, which aim to recognize the best in movie marketing and advertising. Its Women in Film issue is a popular but somewhat controversial ranking of female movie executives. Curiously, the paper's influential celebrity marketability rating system, Star Power, has fallen out of use in recent years. EXTERNAL LINK |
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