Variety to PR: Give Us Your Scoops, Or Else!

Entertainment PR pros: you’ve been warned. If you give scoops to other online publications, Variety won’t run your story in print.

Via the LA Times‘ Patrick Goldstein:

My sources at a number of different studios say that Variety Editor Tim Gray and various entertainment reporters at the trade have been telling publicity execs that if they give casting scoops to any of Variety’s online competition, the paper won’t run their big announcement stories in print, relegating them to online posts only.

Variety Editor Tim Gray also confirmed the new policy to Goldstein. It’s just the latest example of how heated the war for scoops is getting, with relatively new competition like Nikki Finke‘s Deadline Hollywood Daily and Sharon Waxman‘s The Wrap that routinely break news.

PR executives are not impressed. “It’s a terribly analog way of thinking in a digital world,” one studio PR chief told Goldstein.

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