Surely, it can't be a coincidence that the same weekend that FBLA gets an email from a high-powered PR type alerting us to the Jacob Bernstein profile of Nikki Finke in WWD, that Luke Ford and LA Observed also run posts about it. The story appeared in the July 6 print edition, was hidden behind the subscription wall, and isn't all that Google-able, as Jeffrey Wells notes. Ford tells us he can't say where he got news of the piece, and Roderick says it's not from our source.

A few days earlier, Finke took Mike Sitrick to the woodshed about the Captivity media campaign.

Ford, who no doubt has more coming on some conspiracy, has an unidentified source saying:

No one really blames Nikki for the pain she's caused.

She's caused? Certainly Finke's published columns cause far less pain than most of the junk foisted upon the paying public by those she covers. Bernstein, son of Carl and Nora Ephron, admits that Finke wasn't kind about his mother's Bewitched, but she was telling the truth.

The same source doesn't want Finke to end up like Joyce Haber, which seems pretty melodramatic. Does anyone seriously think Nikki Finke would take orders from the FBI?

We emailed Finke, asking for a comment, but alas, she'd rather not.

The piece isn't available from the WWD archives, and we understand that it's gone for a reason. Let's see if we can get WWD to clarify.