John Koblin did his heroic best to explain What It All Means: The accelerating decline of Variety, the rise of celebrity Twitters; the enduring but increasingly preposterous hope of the Los Angeles Times, the swagger of self-made blog bigfoot Nikki Finke; the "clubby" world of pre-internet Tinseltown reporting, the ambitions of upstart blogger Sharon Waxm—

"I do think it's kind of surprising that Sharon Waxman even has a blog," [former LA/NY Times reporter Anita] Busch told us. "I think she's even one of the worst journalists I've ever encountered."

Uhhh...

"Her site is getting no traffic and is inaccurate and boring..." Finke said.

OK, well, maybe we could get back to a constructive dialog about how the economic misfortunes of movie studios have maybe accelerated the decline of printed med...

[Variety's Brian] Lowry, in a blog post singling out [LA Times' Patrick] Goldstein, calls him lazy, petulant and a weak reporter. "Now you have this blog, ‘The Big Picture,' so I'm thrilled to see... you squeeze out more than 800 words a week," wrote Mr. Lowry.

Right. We'll skip right over the discussion of economic viability amid the decimation of advertising revenue in the print-to-online transition, then, and just ask if anyone else want to hurl some fecal m...

"The way [Finke] twists things and the way she always manages to bend the facts-and I put facts in quotes-is in a way that suits her..." Ms. Waxman... added. "People around Hollywood are terrified of her."

Alright, fine, bottom line: In case the example of New York wasn't clear enough, Los Angeles media also illustrate how technology and fragmentation are reviving the old tradition of feuding. As longtime Variety kingpin Peter Bart explains to Koblin, we're going back to the 1930s, when Louella Parsons competed ruthlessly with former friend Hedda Hopper to dominate Hollywood gossip. Everyone is at one another's throats.

No, the Waxman-Finke rivalry isn't exactly hot news, but the point is that more of these little squabbles are erupting all the time, if only because there are so many would-be media alpha dogs in this period of flux, before the inevitable consolidations and shakeouts that make life boring again.

Seeking a final bit of illumination on that, we excitedly emailed Koblin's piece to a media source who quickly replied, "I thought only Hollywood bloggers cared about feuds created entirely to bait traffic, but I totally forgot about the New York Observer!"

Oh, my.

Then again, what did we expect? Welcome to the future. It's kinda bitchy!

[NY Observer]

(Illustration via)

In a post titled, "Memo to Nikki: Stop Saying TheWrap Isn't Breaking Stories," Waxman takes aim at previous Finke claims that Waxman's newly launched media site, TheWrap.com isn't breaking news.

Tit for tat.

In Finke's last hit, she was quoted in I Want Media as saying she doesn't read the site, basically calling it irrelevant.

Finke: "If it ever starts breaking news, and then doing it day after day, hour after hour, it will be. But that's hard. I wish her well."

Ouch.

Waxman writes in her column, saying that was the third instance of Finke dissing her site.

"So before this kind of repetition hardens into supposed fact, let me set the record straight. TheWrap is breaking news every day, and seeks to offer an authoritative, intelligent take on the issues facing the entertainment industry, every day."

She goes on to point out that she beat Finke in reporting that SAG President Alan Rosenberg "was suing his own union over the board's ouster of negotiator Doug Allen," and broke the news of the Lionsgate-Summit talks.

"We won't succeed every day," writes Waxman. "But we break a helluva lot of news, including right in Nikki's sweet spot — the guilds and the potential SAG strike."

Then she said: "Neener, neener, neener." No, really.

Can't wait to see what apocalyptic hellstorm Finke conjures after this.

For starters, Google searches for "The Wrap" place the showbiz portal at the top of their results, accompanied by the following description: "Small local chain offering wraps and juice drinks. Includes menus, nutritional information, video clips, and a list of locations." Apparently The Wrap until now was the online presence of a delicious sandwich outpost servicing the hungry Ivy League minds of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Anyone logging on to order a hummus/tuna combo from now on will be disappointed to find nothing but calorie-deficient updates on Michael Jackson/John Landis legal fracases.

Secondly, the Rumor Mill section—one of our favorites—has been downgrading their gossip condiment bar from 4-pepper habanero spicy ("OVERHEARD AT SUNDANCE: Screenwriter of festival winner Push, Geoffrey Fletcher, so hated the first cut that he opted for a pseudonym, Damien Paul"), to the milder, less flack-dyspepsia-inducing, "The screenwriter of festival winner Push, Geoffrey Fletcher, opted for a pseudonym, Damien Paul. How come?"

C'mon, Sharon. Lay it on us. We got guts of steel! [The Wrap]

The former WaPo/NYT reporter — who took a couple years off to dabble in the always-volatile antiquities beat — has finally reemerged with The Wrap, which she'd been teasing for months from her blog HQ at Waxword and finally launched this morning with a wordy introduction to "new Hollywood" and about $500,000 of venture capital at her back. That kind of money won't hurt, just as fun rumors from Sundance ("Screenwriter of festival winner Push, Geoffrey Fletcher, so hated the first cut that he opted for a pseudonym, Damien Paul") and inspired Slumdog slags also offer some rowdy good times on opening day.

Yet other rooms on the grand tour left us a little chilly: "Who E-Mails In Hollywood?," Sharon? Really? ("Scott Rudin, Academy Award-winning American film producer and a Tony Award-winning theatre producer – but he's new to it.") And we foresee the consolidation (read: eviction) of underwhelming media news and personal blogs before long, including this home run from LAT critic emeritus Howard Rosenberg

Samuel J. “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher is a sitcom waiting to happen since being dispatched to Israel by the website pjtv.com for in-depth reporting on Israel vs. Hamas. Here's my vision of how prime time’s “Journalist Joe” might progress.

Israeli military officer briefing Joe: “Our troops are in the Gaza Strip.”

Joe (perplexed): “Gaza Strip? Is that an Arab girlie club?

Laugh track.

That would coincide with prime time’s generally banal view of journalists.

What? As you were, Howard; there's fresh blood coming in from Variety any minute now.

• The Wrap

We amended yesterday's news of a top-secret actor's meeting to reflect Waxman's retraction, which occurred overnight after Nikki revealed how Waxman got punk'd. Except, Waxman noted this morning, she didn't retract the story; she was just correcting her errors and saved the piece to "draft." Right.

Still, Waxman emphasizes, "the essence of the story is correct": A high-octane, strike-gauging meeting took place at SAG president Alan Rosenberg's request, though not at the time of federal mediation between SAG and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which would a serious no-no. But what about Finke's allegations?

"If the story is so unimportant, I wonder why Nikki Finke devotes so much energy to it, and if doing so serves her readers. I suspect it has more to do with embarrassing a fellow journalist. Is she a mouthpiece for SAG, or an independent voice?"

All right, fine — it's a draw. Still, Sharon, consider having an editor look at that cut above your eye.

• More SAG Secrets: Famous Stars are Asked to Pre-Authorize Strike [WaxWord]

• The 'Secret Starry SAG Strike Meeting' That Wasn't [DHD]

• Who Holds SAG Accountable? [WaxWord]

At least he was nice enough to chime in with a disturbing note from jail, excerpted after the jump.

Yoga, meditation, and the love of my family and God have sustained me as I grapple with blankets that have blood stains dried in tie-dyed patterns and battle nocturnal visits from entities that include, but are not limited to, rodents and insects (that I have not even seen in the jungles of India!). How much of it is my imagination? I'm not really sure. But the whole thing feels like a Stephen King novel turned into a movie directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

A fair trial is a wonderful concept but more of a satire in my case, based on how this has been manipulated and has been anything but fair. No one besides the parties involved (traditionally "two") knows IF intimacy/sex even happened or much less if it was consensual or not. Wouldn't one call 911? Get a rape kit or at least STD testing? Would anyone continue to follow, travel, live with someone who allegedly assaulted them?

Oh, give it up, AJ — Manoj would never direct a Stephen King prison adaptation. That's Frank Darabont territory all the way.

• Designer Sex [LAM]

• An Accused Serial Rapist Speaks, Ahead of Trial [WaxWord]