Nikki Finke was a Consultant for Penske Business Media, LLC, and the Founder & Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of Deadline Hollywood. She was an authority on the business, politics and culture of the entertainment and media industries.

Her long journalism career included positions around the world writing about national, political and international news with the most powerful and influential news outlets. As an Associated Press foreign correspondent, she was posted to Moscow and then London bureaus. As a Newsweek reporter in the Washington DC bureau, she covered politics, wars, social issues and occasionally the White House. A native New Yorker and Wellesley College graduate, she moved to Los Angeles in 1986 where she wrote her first Hollywood business stories as a correspondent for Newsweek and then as a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times. By 1994 she was West Coast Editor and Hollywood columnist for the New York Observer and then for New York Magazine. She also hosted her own entertainment industry show on Southern California public radio. (Photo by Jen Rosenstein copyrighted 2015.)

Nikki joined LA Weekly as its ‘Deadline Hollywood’ print columnist and in March 2006 started DeadlineHollywoodDaily.com online. For the next three years the media alternated between glee and scorn for her many scoops. Dow Jones’ Marketwatch called her the Hollywood "must-read." A profile in Los Angeles magazine claimed she was “essential reading for those who follow the Industry.” But it was her ability to break news during the writer’s strike that cemented her status as the most powerful journalist covering Hollywood. The New York Observer named her ‘Media Mensch Of The Year’. 

In 2009, Nikki’s blog was purchased by Penske Media Corp and she became Deadline’s General Manager & Editor-In-Chief. At the same time, Nikki and Deadline became regularly included on lists of top entertainment websites by prestigious media outlets including Vanity Fair and Time magazines. Nikki has been featured on the front pages of both The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times as well as the Drudge Report, New York Magazine and The New Yorker. When Forbes issued “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women”, Nikki was #79 – higher than the Iceland, Costa Rica, and Liberia presidents. Finke left Deadline in December 2013.

In August 2015, Finke became the CEO & Founder of HollywoodDementia Inc. where she  edited and posted 500+ showbiz short fiction stories written by 150+ insiders at the website HollywoodDementia.com. On Twitter, @NikkiFinke has 300,000+ followers.

In May 2016, Finke wrote a 10-year anniversary look-back about Deadline.com and in January 2017 began consulting for PBM, LLC. In February 2017, she was chosen one of 11 Knight Visiting Nieman Fellows at Harvard University to explore best practices in the reporting of breaking news and analysis in a 24/7 media environment, a field she influenced as founder and editor-in-chief of Deadline.com. She had to postpone her fellowship for health reasons.

From 2011 through 2021 she was a judge for the Mirror Awards competition honoring excellence in media industry reporting bestowed by Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School for Public Communication.

Nikki Finke passed away on October 9, 2022.