NBC - NY TIMES HOLLYWOOD REPORTER QUITS

Sharon Waxman, a Hollywood journalist who was lured away from the Los Angeles Times by the New York Times in 2003, has quit the New York newspaper. She had received six months leave to write a book about the global antiquities trade but had been reassigned to a New York beat while she was away. On her blog Thursday she indicated that she is pulling out of the newspaper game altogether after watching the continuing decline of the business. She said that she is gathering a team to create an interactive website aimed at creating "communities who engage in dialogue with writers, readers and with the people we cover." Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times today (Friday) published an opinion piece by Waxman lambasting the just-canceled Golden Globe awards as a "con" and the members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn., which stages the awards show, as a group mostly of freelancers and freeloaders. Waxman concluded her article by urging NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker to step in to "fix the Golden Globes or take them off the air for good."

11/01/2008