nikki finke

Which Country’s GNP Did Nikki Finke Sell Her Blog For?

A month ago, following the sale of her blog Deadline Hollywood Daily to Jay Penske’s Mail.com Media Corporation, Vulture buddy Nikki Finke famously bragged that she’d done the deal “for the GNP of a small country.” But which one? Wild speculation in the days following the sale put the price tag at $15 million — approximately the gross domestic product of Tuvalu (population: 11,992), an independent, ten-square-mile Polynesian island nation halfway between Hawaii and Australia, and one that Wikipedia certainly makes sound like a beautiful place. But in an A1 story on the “thuggish” Finke (and the pants-shitting Hollywood players who read her) in today’s Times, David Carr reports a more reasonable figure.

Says Carr:

With the sale to Mail.com, Ms. Finke stands to make more than $5 million in the next eight years, and her deal could go as high as $10 million, according to one of the people involved in the deal who declined to be quoted, citing the private nature of the negotiations.


So, optimistically, this would put Penske’s total payout for DHD in the ballpark of the GNP of Niue (population: 1,398), another Polynesian island nation, this one 100 square miles and self-governing under free-association with New Zealand, so therefore lacking sovereignty. It’s nice, we guess, but you know what they say — it’s no Tuvalu.

A Hollywood Blogger Feared by Executives [NYT]

Which Country’s GNP Did Nikki Finke Sell Her Blog For?