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Getting

The

SCOOP

How
entertainment
reporters
go about their
business.

LYNN ISENBERG
Special to The Jewish News

E

ntertainment media has
become the global addiction
of the '90s. With the death
of Princess Diana and the
backlash from celebrities around the
world over the pursuit of celebrity
news, the ways in which entertain-

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ment stories are discovered,
researched, verified and reported has
come under scrutiny.
Three entertainment reporters from
three of the most well-respected publi-
cations in the country — Corie
Brown, entertainment correspondent
for Newsweek magazine; Bernie Wein-
raub, Los Angeles-based correspon-
dent for the New York Times; and Dan

Cox, a reporter for Variety, Holly-
wood's largest trade publication —
take us behind the scenes.

Finding The Story

"Typically, a story is something that's a
happening," says Newsweek's Cone
Brown, formerly West Coast editor of
Premiere magazine.

"Whether it's a movie that's opening
or a company that's going bankrupt or
an individual who's having some event
in his/her life, it's usually pretty obvi-
ous. I don't want to profile somebody
just because we haven't heard about
him in awhile."
"Events guide every journalist," says
the New York Times' Bernie Weinraub,
who is Jewish. "You're guided by what's
happening in the outside world and by
changes going on at various places."
To get the story, "most of the time is
spent on the phone just plugging into
agents, producers and executives," he
says.
Stories must also appeal to the read-
ers of a publication. Weinraub points
to the audience of the New York Times.
"You try to figure out what would be
interesting to people who read newspa-
pers. You're writing, after all, not for a
specialized audience."
At the other end of the spectrum are
the trade papers, like Variety. With a
readership of 26;000 people, Variety
serves an audience with an average
income of $370,000:
These are people who work in the
entertainment business who need to
know everything that's going on: from
which high-level executives are being
fired or hired to what films are being
made, says Varie ty 's Dan Cox, another
Jewish journalist.
And, of course, Cox writes about
money. One of his recent pieces ana-
lyzed the money and magic of Sony
Pictures' Men In Black. "The fact that
it made $500 million worldwide is a
big boon for that company," Cox says.
He estimates the movie will make an
additional $200 million on video and
another $100 million from television.
"That's almost a billion dollars from
one movie -- an outrageous amount of
money."
Cox considers entertainment news
as valid as news from Wall Street and
the White House. The staples of his
reporting, however, remain "chasing
down daily stories, looking for who is
starring in movies, who is writing
movies, who is directing movies, who is
producing movies, how they are com-
ing together, which studio is green-
lighting which movies and which stu-
dio is stopping production on movies."
An entertainment reporter operates
at his or her best by developing rela-
tionships with agents, managers, pro-
ducers, stars, and executives all over

Lynn Isenberg is a native Detroiter
who works as a screenwriter-producer in
Hollywood

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