David Carr Gets a Phone Call from Nikki Finke

The most noteworthy element in David Carr‘s summary of the latest Sharon Waxman-Nikki Finke coup de guerre is his claim that Finke’s contract does not, as reported elsewhere, allow her to opt out starting this month. Rather, the New York Times media columnist says Finke’s obligations to PMC run through 2016 and that it is only next year, 2014, that an opt-out clause can be exercised.

Carr also details his efforts to check in with Finke to get her version of the past week’s events. That portion of the article begins as follows:

I buckled up and sent an e-mail to Ms. Finke, and in a subsequent phone call she did not disappoint. After chewing me out for 15 minutes over a four-year-old story she didn’t like, she turned to the matter at hand.

“I still work here and beyond that, I am not going to dignify Sharon Waxman’s story,” she said. “She has a terrible reputation for accuracy in Hollywood, and to dignify anything she writes with a denial is ludicrous.”

Waxman tells Carr she stands by her June 2 TheWrap “SHOCKER.” At the end of the “Media Equation” item, the reporter makes a valid point about Finke: unlike many of the Hollywood figures happily caught in her media web, she has never pretended to be “something she is not.” Read Carr’s piece here.