Posts Tagged ‘Patrick Goldstein’

As BuzzFeed’s first, former and so far only LA bureau chief, Richard Rushfield saw his fair share of solid Web traffic reports. But he has now moved on to a company where those numbers are truly spectacular.

FishbowlLA tipsters inform that Rushfield joined Yahoo Entertainment a few weeks ago as features editor. Sure enough, we found what looks to be a first bylined item, dated May 30. Although we imagine much of Rushfield’s day-to-day duties will fall on the enterprise and long-lead assignment side.

Rushfield joins Yahoo Entertainment on the heels of former TMZ GM and LA Times vet Alan Citron’s arrival as business lead. The LAT genealogy also extends to Yahoo editor-in-chief Scott Robson, who worked with Rushfield at The Envelope. At this rate, we wouldn’t be surprised if Patrick Goldstein is soon announced as a Yahoo columnist.

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John Corrigan (pictured), who was recently promoted at the LA Times from business editor to assistant managing editor of arts and entertainment, is in a sense going back to his roots. As he told a reporter for the student newspaper at his Alma Mater (where he also spoke Monday), he initially wanted to write movie scripts:

“I was a screenwriting major here at Loyola Marymount University, and when I graduated I couldn’t figure out how to become a screenwriter. So I ended up getting into a Master’s program at [CSU] Northridge in communications. From there, I managed to get an [unpaid] internship at the LA Times and some clips.”

The Q&A by Loyolan managing editor Kevin O’Keeffe fails unfortunately to do justice to its headline, “11 Burning Questions with an LA Times editor.” That’s because there is no mention of the recent departures from Corrigan’s watch of brand name columnists Patrick Goldstein and Geoff Boucher, both reportedly unhappy with the new mechanics of the paper’s arts and entertainment coverage.

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Two of the biggest LA Times Calendar brand names are now officially moving on. And really, the best place to get a sense of what happened with Patrick Goldstein and Geoff Boucher is to click through to outlets that managed to speak with these departing vets.

Goldstein laid it out recently during Episode #161 of weekly podcast Showbiz Sandbox with J. Sperling Reich and Michael Glitz. Thanks to his LAT buyout, “The Big Picture” columnist said he’s going to take some time off and cheer his son on the baseball diamond. He also stressed that it was an amicable parting, a matter of new management wanting him to change his unbridled M.O.:

“I had a wonderful, long run. But all good things come to an end. I always had complete freedom and autonomy to write about what I thought was interesting and give my take on everything. But we have some new leadership in the entertainment features side of the newspaper and they wanted to make some changes and go in a different direction and have me go in a different direction. And I just thought… No, I kind of wanted to go in the direction that I’ve been going in.”

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Another blog about Los Angeles launched this past month, this one from native sons Hillel Aron and Richard Rushfield. They’re a pair left jaded by journalism careers, which have included a good deal of reporting on both Hollywood and the city that surrounds it. “We know the rules,” they write. “A website about Los Angeles is supposed to be about the search for the cutest artisanal tamale stand made of sustainable vegan bamboo. Or it can be a website devoted to kissing up to talent agents, deputy editors, chefs, curators, hoteliers and dead buildings.”

But they promise something different: “We come to point fingers and poke eyes, to name names and call names and dig up dirt.”

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According to Nikki Finke tonight, Geoff Boucher – quarterback of the popular “Hero Complex” blogs and column (pictured) – is on his way out the LAT door.

Boucher has been with the paper since 1991. He would neither confirm or deny Finke’s sourced tip, but as she writes, this would if true complete a huge double-whammy loss for the paper:

Boucher’s exit follows editor Davan Maharaj’s arrival and then a new entertainment editorial team announced June 20th. That was like moving deck chairs on the Titanic given that the newspaper has become lazy and irrelevant and its showbiz ads have fallen 25% every year as studio and theater chains abandon the publication. Seriously, folks, no Boucher and no [Patrick] Goldstein = no showbiz readers.

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By all accounts, Wednesday’s “The Big Picture” column in the LA Times is Patrick Goldstein’s last.

Kevin Roderick was the first to spot the buried lede. TheWrap’s Alexander C. Kaufman tried unsuccessfully to get LA Times folks to confirm. Then, at around 9 p.m. PT tonight, Nikki Finke swooped in with the details:

My sources say Goldstein decided to take a buyout rather than work for the new leadership at the newspaper announced earlier this year. “He felt there was no more future for him there. It was obvious since all the new people think about is driving Web traffic. They’re trying to put everyone to work doing that,” my source says.

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It didn’t take long for the folks at Variety to react to LA Times columnist Patrick Goldstein‘s article about the trade’s current on-the-block fortunes. Tweeted film editor Josh Dickey:

Goldstein says he spent a week working his network of Hollywood contacts to take the trade’s current temperature. Here is some of what he was told:

A surprising number of subscribers said they get the paper just to keep tabs on the awards-season ads.

As one studio marketer told me: “I only subscribe out of habit. I can’t remember the last time I read anything in the paper when I didn’t already know the information from somewhere else.”

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Patrick Goldstein has an interesting take on the current media fascination with the astronomical free agent salary deals landed by Major League Baseball stars Prince Fielder and Albert Pujols.

He suggests that just as the DVD boom once fueled the headline-grabbing paydays of Hollywood A-listers, billion-dollar media rights deals for MLB teams are now powering a similar inflationary curve on the baseball diamond. This shift has also taken out a once common top-tier talent agency tactic:

CAA was famous for leaking its star salary numbers in the ’90s, and every dazzling new salary breakthrough sent a telling message to stars signed to a rival agency–why isn’t your agent raking in all that moolah for you? When salaries are in decline, as they are now, you rarely see the likes of Kevin Huvane or Ari Emanuel feeding any information to the press, as today’s salary news only offers another instance of the scaling down of A-list actors’ earning power.

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Miami Herald film critic Rene Rodriguez was able to track down The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo director David Fincher, to get the filmmaker’s opinion about all this New Yorker-David Denby brouhaha business.

In case you hadn’t yet heard, Denby has been chastised by the film’s producer, Scott Rudin, and many media colleagues for breaking the December 13 Sony embargo on published reviews of the Fincher flick. On the very same Miami newspaper website, in fact, LA Times media critic Patrick Goldstein wonders whether the whole concept of a film review embargo is even still valid.

FishbowlLA applauds Fincher for: a) Putting this matter in the proper perspective (“tempest in a teapot…”); and, b) Saying something that we’ve always firmly believed would be far preferable for just about all concerned:

“Look, if it were up to me, I wouldn’t show movies to anybody before they were released. I wouldn’t give clips to talk shows. I would do one trailer and three television spots and let the chips fall where they may. That’s how far in the other direction I am. If I had my way, the New York Film Critics Circle would not have seen this movie [November 28] and then we would not be in this situation. I would be opening this movie on Wednesday Dec. 21 and I would have three screenings on Tuesday Dec. 20 and that would be it.

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Here at FishbowlLA, we can no longer get too excited or angry about matters Oscar-related. The show is a colossal disappointment each and every year, the acceptance speeches are honed for months on end via other telecasts, and in today’s fractious world the whole thing seems less important than ever. But we are clearly in the Hollywood media minority.

In the wake of this week’s announcement that Oprah Winfrey will receive the prestigious Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award on November 21, LA Times media critic Patrick Goldstein, Oscar show spoiler Nikki Finke, and many more are hitting the Kodak Theatre roof. Meanwhile, AP LA reporter Sandy Cohen has since checked in with Oprah (no comment by press time) and Academy president Tom Sherak:

“Oprah has given and given and given,” Sherak said, adding that she has contributed more than $500 million of her own money to charitable causes. “She’s a member of the academy, she was nominated for an Academy Award and she has produced movies. This is not about personality. This is about a person who has come from the depths, risen to the heights and given back. That’s a perfect example of why this award was created.”

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