It’s hard to argue with the selection of Janice Min for this week’s LA Weekly issue celebrating “the most interesting people” in Los Angeles. The name-brand editorial director has completely re-invigorated a moribund Hollywood trade, showed Jay Penske the way with her weekly glossy print edition and essentially steered clear of Nikki Finke‘s core beat.

So much so that a New York Post story today about the contract renewal status of Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter mentions Min as a logical successor. Here’s a taste from Gendy Alimurung‘s LA Weekly profile of the “tiny, friendly” 43-year-old:

The new Hollywood Reporter launched in November 2010, a scant four months after Min took charge. The compressed schedule forced her to think clearly, she believes. Sometimes too much time muddles your thinking. The proof is in the numbers: Online traffic is up 800 percent. More importantly, revenue is up 50 percent.

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March was very good to Bonnie Fuller’s PMC website HollywoodLife. The celebrity news destination, launched in November 2009, attracted a new high of 13.9 million unique visitors. To top it off, Monday (April 1) was HL’s best single day yet, with unique visitors cresting past the one-million mark.

The March 2013 numbers represent a 60% increase over the same period last year. Also intriguing is the fact there was no “major” celebrity news event last month around which traffic coalesced. Rather, HollywoodLife editors tell us the site was stealthily visited by young readers on the hunt for famous-people and famous-fashions tidbits.

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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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Score one for Nikki Finke‘s tireless TV editor. It is Nellie Andreeva who arrived first this morning to the news of Barbara Walters‘ TV retirement plans, although she initially confused many with the suggestion it would be May of this year. From her updated item:

I’ve learned a plan has been put in place for Walters to announce her retirement, eyed for May 2014. Fitting for Walters’ status as the grand dame of TV journalism and a signature face of ABC News, I hear she would be given a big sendoff with retrospectives and other special content in the weeks leading to her retirement that would celebrate her 52-year broadcast career.

The breaking news on Deadline sent other outlets and media journalists into overdrive. Some, like The Daily Beast and the New York Daily News, were happy to give Deadline the link-back love, credit. Many others preferred instead to frame the developing story via the new-sources, we-separately-confirmed drill.

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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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Among the various Twitter wise-cracks posted in response to the news that Variety, Deadline (and other PMC Web publications) will soon be sharing the same LA westside digs was this one:

More like reality TV show. Especially since one of the floors being leased at the Westwood high rise will feature “a full video production studio and three green-screen rooms.”

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Nikki Finke was first on the west coast this morning to some major Grey Lady news: the appointment of Danielle Mattoon as culture editor and Sia Michel as editor for Arts & Leisure. As Finke points out, even though Hollywood does not read the paper nearly as much as it used to, the moves still put Mattoon at the top of the Tinseltown PR pitch-list.

Finke also reminds that this NYT news should have really come out before the Oscars:

Executive editor Jill Abramson‘s announcement today was nearly four weeks late according to her own timetable for naming a new culture editor. Then again, she has a lot on her plate because her publication is beset by financial problems, editorial buyouts, stiff competition, not to mention conservative critics who want to put what they see as the Liberal Paper Of Record out of business.

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The rapid return of one-time ICM chief Jeff Berg to the Hollywood talent agency business underpins this week’s oddest LA media coincidence.

On the front page of today’s LA Times Calendar section, there is an article about Berg’s new agency Resolution by Daniel Miller. And inside this week’s Hollywood Reporter print magazine, Miller’s former THR colleague Stephen Galloway shares a longer, deeper feature about the very same topic. Galloway got to speak with the 65-year-old Berg at the latter’s new 23rd-story Century City offices; Miller’s request for an interview was declined.

Whether Berg’s Resolution will be good for the Hollywood community as a whole has yet to be determined. But per Galloway’s piece, it’s already been very good for talent agents:

Rivals criticize Berg for overpaying, noting most [Resolution agents] are getting well above the $200,000 to $300,000 they might expect elsewhere and some as much as seven figures. “He is making deals just because they are possible to make,” one rival grouses.

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Sometime between Friday, January 25 and Saturday, January 26, Vanity Fair made a decision that it is today deeply regretting. Perhaps the magazine’s brass figured that by making deputy editor Bruce Handy’s online op-ed about Zero Dark Thirty star Jessica Chastain quickly disappear over a weekend, the move would not be noticed.

But in what has to rank as a major embarrassment for editor Graydon Carter, Nikki Finke has caught up to the subterfuge. Hollywood initially played dumb when the journalist inquired, before New York finally fessed up:

Publicists for Sony Pictures and Chastain’s BNC flackery told me it was “not true” that VF deleted the article. But, to its credit, Vanity Fair owned up to it. Explained VF spokeswoman Beth Kseniak: “We took it down because it ran counter to what a number of people at the magazine believed.”

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Is Nikki Finke still sure about those alleged March Variety layoffs? A day after the trade officially unveiled its triumvirate of editors-in-chief comes the news that Brian Steinberg has been enlisted as a senior TV editor.

The announcement is posted on the beta version of the publication’s new website. Too early to tell how close the page is to the upcoming finished product, but we’re not too fond of the headline font for this article.:

Steinberg has covered the media and advertising industries since 1998, most recently serving as television editor at Advertising Age… He’s managed Ad Age’s popular annual chart of TV spot prices for the past five years and is an expert on Super Bowl commercials.

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