This editor's note concerning a recent Jacob Bernstein profile of Hollywood gossip Nikki Finkke ran in today's Women's Wear Daily. According to Keith Kelly, WWD won't repost the story because "there is a legal question about whether one blanket 'yes you can tape [the conversation]' covered all subsequent follow-up interviews." Our immediate reaction was on what planet? But the planet is California. So we guess it's a cautionary tale for New Yorkers interviewing Californians. Or anyone interviewing Nikki Finke. Update: The whole story is online elsewhere.

Three months after signing a three-year extension with the network, NBC's entertainment chief Kevin Reilly is out of a job, being replaced by Ben Silverman, producer of "The Office." The news was first reported by Hollywood blabbermouth Nikki Finke (please save the e-mails, Nikki, we mean it in a good way) on Friday, and then regurgitated without credit by the New York Times and the LAT yesterday. (Classy!) The Wall Street Journal notes that Reilly, responsible the for "Heroes," last season's only hit, got like a totally raw deal.

Poor Bernard Weinraub's all upset because the New York Times—his old paper— gave his very first play, which is about the Holocaust, a bad, mean-spirited review, and he went running to his old bestie Nikki Finke to complain. He's upset because, since he used to work at the Times, the paper assigned a freelancer to review it, and the review was so awful (at least in Bernie's eyes) that he simply had to assume a conspiracy was afoot. After all, such publications as Newsday and the New York Sun (which, let's face it, would probably give a rave review to a backyard performance by a bunch of goats if it was about the Holocaust) liked it! So what the hey, Times?

Unless you subscribe, you'll have to visit your local newsstand to read this week's New Yorker profile of P.R. megastar Howard Rubenstein. Is it worth going out into this arctic wonderland and dropping $4.50, or is the piece, as Nikki Finke puts it, just "the usual CEO porn that [Ken] Auletta spins out on a semi-regular basis"? We donned our overcoats and headed into the freezing tundra of SoHo to find out. Here's what we learned when we thawed:

In news that will excite all the thirtysomething ladies who desperately need TV role models to justify their one night stands, shoe-splurges, and bloggy confessions about same, it seems that a miniseries version of Candace Bushnell's latest novel, Lipstick Jungle, will be coming soon to a small screen near you. Yawn, we know. But in Nikki Finke's writeup of the deal, we did find this detail intriguing:

Say what you will about Harvey Weinstein - he's a big fat Heeb with a bad temper and a gruff, uncouth manner - but the man knows his marketing. Consider the forthcoming Black X-Mas, a Santa-slasher pic from the Weinstein Company being released on Christmas Day! The holiest day of the year! Predictably, the outrage police have already had their hackles raised: Matt Drudge links to this Nikki Finke cri de couer:

• News headline disappointingly misleading. [NYDN]
  

• What will the effect of Jeffrey Johnson's ouster from the LAT be? Well, for one thing, it will allow every media outlet to print articles like this one, which speculates about the effect of Jeffrey Johnson's ouster from the LAT. [WSJ]
• Nikki Finke thinks Dean Baquet is a big pussy. [DHD]
• Carly Fiorina wants credit for H-P's turnaround. H-P's spying? Not so much. [NYT]
• Jack Shafer is bullish on Bloomberg News, even though its news "has all the mouth-feel of a cup of talc." Yeah, it took us a while to get that one out of our heads too. [Slate]
• Now you can be bored by twelve full years of Charlie Rose. [WWD]
• Even when Jon Friedman admits to spouting the conventional wisdom he's spouting the conventional wisdom. [Marketwatch]

• Nikki Finke reveals the missing money quote from the War of the Worlds: Viacom Vs. Cruise edition. [Deadline Hollywood]
• William H Macy wants to can Lindsay Lohan, probably because she dated Jared Leto briefly in '05. [Celebrity Week]
• The themes are: Incest, drug addiction, and promiscuous sex. Hmmm must be a Marie Claire party. [FWD]
• This couple from the m nage a laptop story real do get around [Salon]
• Video of 6'7" Jewish Rapper with dreadlocks. Nuff said, no? [ANIMAL]
• Katrina Anniversary Concert: featuring The Roots, Moby, Rosie Perez, Julia Stules and more. [Beyond Katrina]

Say what you will about Nikki Finke, the woman's got great journalistic instincts. In the wake of the Mel Gibson furor she contacts Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center. Toward the end of the interview, Finke asks the rabbi if he would assist Gibson in changing his anti-Semitic attitudes. Hier responds:

Consider the feud: It's the flame that fuels the blogosphere, the stuff that sells the glossy mags, the only reason anyone outside of barely legal dyslexic nymphets has heard of Doug Dechert. After the jump we take a quick look at a few of the feuds that have been happening this week and choose up sides.

Been a while since we checked in with eccentric Hollywood chronicler (NOTE: we did not use the words "crazy," "crackpot," or "lunatic") Nikki Finke. Wonder what folks are saying about her?

• Is it sexist to call Nikki Finke crazy? Either way, we're about five minutes from a batshit rant in our inbox. [Cathy's World]
• All of alleged plagiarist Ann Coulter's alleged plagiarisms in one convenient spot. Ann Coulter is 45. [TPM Muckraker]
• New York Times writers: always wanting more. [E&P]
• Jon Friedman thinks bloggers are loudmouths who resort to name-calling just to be heard. Douchebag. [Marketwatch]

• Star fucking Jones, what are we going to do with you? She's forced off The View, then does a surprise, on-air resignation, then tells People magazine that she was betrayed. Barbara Walters locks her out, and now we're subjected to an endless round of interviews featuring Jones passive-aggressively reflecting on the whole thing. And scene.
• Oh, you best believe Radar is alive and kicking and hiring. Lots of hiring.
• Harper's Bazaar allows Britney Spears to take her clothes off; to make matters worse, the mag forces her nudie pics upon our innocent eyes.
• LA Weekly scribe Nikki Finke is SO NOT INSANE.
• Stephen Colbert and Chris Matthews share their intensely physical manlove with the world.
• It's Devil Wears Prada madness; Anna Wintour will be played by Victoria Principal.
• The Bonnie Fuller backlash never goes out of style.
• Here's the thing with our boy Anderson Cooper: everyone loves him. And yet nobody watches him.
• Charlie Gibson leaves morning television, thus forcing us to watch Good Morning America.
• Another Fake Writer, this time at the Post. Which really isn't that surprising or interesting, come to think of it.
• Harper Lee comes out of hiding, all for the love of Oprah. Really, there's nothing the woman can't do.

Yesterday, as you may have seen but probably did not, Marketwatch's Jon Friedman published a short profile of LA Weekly columnist and Deadline Hollywood Daily blogger Nikki Finke. Friedman had contacted us — or, at least, half of us — for a quote about Finke, whose work we admire. We obliged with this: "I think what makes Nikki so compelling is that she's clearly at least a bit crazy — and you can never quite figure out if it's good crazy or bad crazy. She's a great reporter and a fun writer, and God knows I wouldn't want to be on her bad side." We intended that as a lighthearted and complimentary appraisal, and we know that Friedman, among several others who've mentioned it to us, took it that way. But Finke, who has written on her blog about her contempt for Friedman's entirely positive article, had a different read. She thinks we have defamed her, and she has repeatedly demanded a correction and apology. So here it is: We're sorry, and we in no way meant to suggest that Finke is actually, clinically crazy. Indeed, after the jump, please find our entire email exchange with her on this matter, which will show that she's not crazy in the slightest.

Yeah, yeah, yeah; this has nothing to do with New York. But, still, we've got to point out the Deadline Hollywood column in the new L.A. Weekly, because it so perfectly demonstrates why we adore the left coast's Miss Run Amok, crusading nutcase Nikki Finke. This week she's writing on Warren Beatty and his role in the embarrassing failure of Schwarzenegger's propositions in Tuesday's election:

Nikki Finke, our favorite left coast vituperator (besides our silicone-enhanced brother, of course), is not particularly fond, for some reason, of MTV:

• Nikki Finke profiles new LAT opinions editor Andres Martinez, who defected from our Times to theirs, and shockingly, doesn't tear him a new one. [LA Weekly]
• Fired ABC London correspondent says Peter Jennings wielded "hugely disproportionate" influence, without clarifying what exactly would be "proportionate" for the man with his name on the show. [Guardian]
• Slutty sis Wonkette comes to New York for a panel on — what else? — blogs and journalism, and she doesn't so much as say hello. [WWD]
• The Times wouldn't hire Slatester Tim Noah because they don't like white people. We thought it was because they don't like Jews. [Slate]
• FCC indecency complaints dropped by factor of 20 from first quarter to second. The copier must have broken at the Parents Television Council. [B&C]

It's time for the latest edition of The Black Table's Rock and a Hard Place, A.J. Daulerio's notoriously disgusting column devoted to offending journalists as best he can (which is probably what prompted his recent adoption into our perverse family as editor of Oddjack). Today Daulerio takes on Time graduate, talking head, and LA Times scribe Joel Stein. Things, as they often do, turned to the topic of LA Weekly's resident fury, Nikki Finke, who would likely roast Stein on a spit if she had the chance.

• Former Timesman Dean Baquet continues to be newly crowned LAT editor, as Tom Scocca goes west to confirm. [NYO]
• And Michael Kinsley did "a pretty horrible job" at LAT, says Nikki Finke. Come on, Nikki, what do you really think? [L.A. Weekly]
• RIP, Post's Hamptons Dairy, more or less. [Media Mob]
• Syd Schanberg teaches the right way to read the paper and watch TV. We can't believe we've been so woefully undertrained all these years. [VV]
• More virgins in Manhattan: Richard Branson considers free NYC daily. [Forbes]