by Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent

Okay, so that headline is stolen from Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Ring” when Gandalf addresses Saruman, but it does relate to the current fracas between Deadline founder and Editor Emeritus Nikki Finke, her old employer Jay Penske (who also owns Variety), and the editorial team of Peter Bart and Mike Fleming in place at Finke’s former site since her ouster in late 2013.

Without getting in the mud, a joint-bylined piece trashing Nikki Finke, allegedly in retaliation for some name-calling at her new site http://nikkifinke.com was published by veteran journalist Peter Bart and ex-Variety journeyman Mike Fleming on Sunday June 22, 2014, a day that should have been consumed with reporting The 2014 Daytime Emmy’s. 

In sum, their headliner purported to reveal the reasons Finke would not be “welcome back” at Deadline.

Seriously, instead of covering the Daytime Emmy winners and nominees, Bart & Fleming did a takedown on Nikki Finke in the form of a Q & A, and they made this (bad) decision during active litigation between Jay Penske’s legal team suing Nikki Finke for breach of a non-compete/non-disparage agreement.

While the writing of the piece itself is petulant and egregious, not worthy of Bart nor Fleming, the comparison of Nikki Finke to Louella Parsons (1881-1971) and Hedda Hopper (1890-1966), the reigning gossip queens of the Forties and Fifties, demands a response. 

Bart, the senior journalist in this mess, displays a basic misunderstanding that underscores how, in the Digital Age, so little is understood about the new media rules.

Tarring Finke with the “gossip queen” brush misses the fact that she is what’s called an “Influencer," and that whether she had a website on Hollywood or Humvees, with 227,000 followers visible from her Twitter account, she shapes the news.

Both Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper began life in Hollywood as actresses; Nikki Finke graduated from Wellesley and made her career as a bona fide journalist.

We are talking about the difference between a Studio PR Tool vs Influencer, and let the irony shine through that Deadline under new management has been roundly accused of being exactly that - a Studio PR Tool.

Born Louella Rose Oettinger, Parsons was a screenwriter, actress, and appeared as ‘Herself’ in later life. She, like Hedda Hopper, was used by the Studio System both in crisis management and in star-making. 

Her daughter, Harriet Parsons (1906-1983) an actress in Margaret’s Awakening(1912) and The Wand (1912), worked to debunk “myths” about her mother Louella - mostly that she was hated by a lot of stars and executives - after the gossip columnist’s death. Incidentally, Louella wrote both movies mentioned above that featured her daughter Harriet, a clear endorsement of nepotism.

Hedda Hopper, whose real name was Elda Furry, was from Pennsylvania and made a go of it on the silent screen in New York. When silent star Anita Stewart spun off her own production company, a rarity at the time, Hopper was a Supporting Actress on one of her shoots. The shoot, which took place on a stage rented from Vitagraph, included Hopper allegedly blowing her $1000 on gowns so fine that they actually upstaged Stewart’s wardrobe.

A clotheshorse and self-styled tastemaker, Hopper had the perspicacity to switch to writing about films and film stars, with her first industry-recognized column in the Los Angeles Times in 1938. She died on the same day as Buster Keaton in 1966.

Both women were the subject of books and movie projects, notably “Malice in Wonderland” - made for television in 1985 - that starred Elizabeth Taylor as  Louella Parsons and Jane Alexander as Hedda Hopper.

William Holden (1918-1981), whose real name was William Franklin Beedle Jr., was quoted in 1971 as saying that he hated "the ground rules of 30 years ago, when you did anything to get your name in the paper with Hedda Hopper or Louella Parsons."

While FunnyorDie.com has made a spoof on Nikki Finke with Jean Smart, and there were rumors that Diane Keaton was slated to play Nikki in a project based on her Deadline days, as of now, the real drama surrounding Finke is in print.

Metrics are the lifeblood of any website, or even traditional print/broadcast outlet, in the Digital Era. Nikki Finke is what’s called “a whale,” which means she is the ripple that shakes the whole pond. 

Companies like the recent Digital Entertainment World (DEW) 2014 start-up winner Ninja Metrics actually have proprietary ways of telling us how much these kinds of influencers are worth. It is not about money, however, it’s about driving the news and presenting an authentic original voice. 

What Deadline’s new management, both in editorial and in oversight positions, have overlooked is that their former Editor-in-Chief created a cultural destination in Hollywood that welcomed all comers, newcomers and hard-bitten industry cynics alike, to a place where they could become part of a New Hollywood Community. A community created by Nikki Finke and as important as the old Canteens and Writer’s Buildings on Studio Lots. She made a gathering place for high and low, produced and un-produced, pros and non-pros, with the old Deadline. And now she is doing it with NikkiFinke.com.

As writers know, you can’t stay on deadline forever, finally you have to file that story and move on.

While Nikki Finke isn’t Louella or Hedda, she isn’t Pauline Kael or Rogert Ebert - lately the subject of a touching documentary/memoir film “Life Itself” (#LifeItself) - either.

Los Angeles once had Raymond Chandler to define its cultural identity, and in Hollywood we have Nikki Finke.

Sorry guys, she is the one and only, the real thing.

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