For Josh Dickey, Day One as managing editor of TMZ.com involved among other things the business of another Jenna Jameson arrest. In the case of his recent Variety charge Jeff Sneider, who officially returns next Monday to former employer TheWrap, the purview is much closer to the one he used to patrol at 5900 Wilshire Blvd.

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Thanks to a brief but complicated pre-launch history linking Henry Scott’s WEHOville.com to Ryan Gierach’s WeHo News, the gloves are always quick to come off whenever these two outlets get tangled up in the same story. The latest example involves an April 1 Gierach exclusive, WEHOville’s quick response and a subsequent WeHo News April 2-3 rebuttal.

The WeHo News articles pertain to some serious business: a West Hollywood city councilman’s alleged misuse of a credit card and Gierach’s accusations that he has been libeled by his cross-town competitor. But there’s also a more light-hearted side-note element that we had to share.

According to Gierach, Scott twice emailed him (in December 2012 and March 2013) to ask whether rumors of WeHo News’ demise were true and offer, generously (?), to cover this developing story. From the 4/2-3 WeHo News item:

Scott has sent WeHo News emails that stated “Rumor going around… that you are no longer publishing. True? If so, care to comment? We’d be happy to do a story…”

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If you’d told us 18 months ago that all four Hollywood trade publications would be flush in the spring of 2013 and raring to (still) go at each other, we would have laughed the way Nikki Finke does when someone brings up the name Jeff Sneider. But lo and behold, that is indeed the case, with the former Variety film reporter today tipping these unlikely scales.

Sneider has rejoined his old outlet TheWrap, moving to the same general geographical neighborhood that his former Variety editor Josh Dickey will soon be occupying for TMZ purposes. (Sneider back at TheWrap… Dickey at TMZ… OK, that may actually be more surprising than what we just referenced above.) From Sharon Waxman’s announcement:

“I once acknowledged that ‘second chances are rare in this business,’ and I’m grateful to TheWrap for believing in me and offering me this exciting opportunity,” Sneider said. “I’ve been impressed with how TheWrap has grown since I’ve been away and I look forward to returning to this top-notch team of entertainment journalists.”

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Big news this afternoon on the Hollywood trades front. And it’s Nikki Finke once again letting the Variety cat out of the bag.

Film editor Josh Dickey, who recently lost his pit bull reporter Jeff Sneider, has accepted a job with TMZ.com. He will be the site’s new managing editor. From Finke’s brief dispatch:

Dickey will become TMZ’s managing editor after giving his notice at Variety where he was film editor. Variety’s New York editor Jill Goldsmith was let go on March 8th as was Variety’s creative director Paula Taylor more recently.

This is a huge score for Harvey Levin. Dickey, formerly of TheWrap, is leaving the trade quadrangle for a site that sometimes spends a little bit too much time in the sensational gutter. Hopefully, he can temper that. For example, TMZ.com recently got a lot of flack from the family of a Hollywood nightclub shooting victim for airing full cell phone video footage of the crime.

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It’s shaping up as a momentous week on the Hollywood trades staffing front. Following Monday’s announcement that THR senior writer Daniel Miller is headed to the LA Times and today’s dismissal of Jeff Sneider by Variety, there is also confirmation to FishbowlLA of a gaggle of new Reporter hires.

The marquee addition is Marc Bernardin (pictured) as senior editor. He comes over to THR from Entertainment Weekly and was previously a contributing editor for io9.com, managing editor of Starlog magazine and a consulting editor for Fangoria. Bernardin has also written a range of comic books.

Joining him as the newest THR additions will be:

- Jen Hoche as copy chief. She was formerly copy chief at Teen Vogue and has worked as a freelance copy editor at THR for two years.

- Kelsey Stefanson, assistant art director. She will focus on designing pages for the print magazine and iPad App.

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Like so many things involving feisty Variety film writer Jeff Sneider, the info was divulged suddenly and without warning via Twitter:

Then came a story on TheWrap about Sneider’s dismissal, written by Alexander C. Kaufman with input from Sharon Waxman. The article gets a critical fact wrong; a tweet referenced was not connected to Robopocalypse but rather was the sixth and final component of Sneider’s rapid-fire expression of dismay on Twitter when he learned he had lost an entirely different long-simmering scoop to The Hollywood Reporter (about Christopher Nolan planning to direct Interstellar).

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Is this taking the post-Newtown massacre media climate a little too far? Some, like Variety film reporter Jeff Sneider, certainly think so.

Sneider is referring to a December 19 article on TheWrap by Greg Gilman. The site sought (and received) comment from This Is 40 writer-director Judd Apatow about whether a line of dialogue that has the grandfather character played by Albert Brooks joking about “murdering” his triplet sons will/should have been removed:

“I wrote this script two years ago. That line is spoken by a sarcastic father kidding with his children,” the director said in a statement to TheWrap. “In light of recent events, I understand if some people might make an unfortunate association or put it in a context in which it was not intended.”

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Yesterday at 5:33 p.m. PT, Deadline.com reporter Dominic Patten – who has greatly beefed up the site’s coverage of local courtroom proceedings – filed an item with the headline “Ari Emanuel & Wife Sue Clothing Retailers Over $600,000 Investment.” That item is no longer on the website.

In its place can be found a rare Nikki Finke apology, posted four hours later at 9:21 p.m. Emanuel, a William Morris Endeavor titan and celebrated inspiration for Jeremy Piven’s Entourage character Ari Gold, is was once one of Finke’s top go-to sources and basically seen by her as unimpeachable the apology is being interpreted by some as an attempt to get back in his good graces.

Perhaps if Finke was not on vacation this week, this item would have been flagged before initial posting. Then again, one would expect the website’s rotating managing editors – all three of them – to have the equivalent of a “Do Not Perturb!” post-it on the side of their computers. With Emanuel’s name right at the top.

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Earlier this week, Ted Koppel told The Hollywood Reporter the only time he ever killed a legitimate news story during his illustrious career was when he chose not to report about the half-dozen Americans hiding out at the Canadian embassy in Tehran. Now comes a reminder of some even more explicit  Argo media subterfuge.

Variety film reporter Jeff Sneider notes that on January 15, 1980, his publication shared a paragraph about the fictitious movie as if it were a real project:

Variety published the following news brief in its Pix, People, Pickups roundup: “Studio Six Prods. has announced that sci-fi thriller, ‘Argo,’ will begin filming in March on various locations in Asia and Europe. Indie is keeping mum on any plot and cast details until just before pic is released.”

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The ominous, bizarre, hilarious specter of Mike Fleming and Jeff Sneider working for the same parent company has reared its head again. This time in the form of a Monday afternoon LA Times report by Ben Fritz:

Penske Media Corp., the owner of Deadline and six other online properties, is now the leading bidder for Variety, partnered with private equity fund Shamrock Capital Advisors, according to two knowledgeable people not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The company, led by Jay Penske (pictured), the 33-year-old son of automobile magnate Roger Penske, could close a deal to purchase the paper in the next three weeks for around $30 million, one of the people added.

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