Deadline Haters Get the Gift of 'Ethnic Castings'

A few weeks ago, there was all sorts of online fury hurled in the direction of Deadline co-editor-in-chief Mike Fleming Jr. when he failed to credit the website Latino Review for a Spider-Man-related scoop. Kellvin Chavez started off his March 2 item by revealing that he had been working for weeks on confirming the news; but nowhere in Fleming's same-day post was that reporter's work mentioned or linked. Fleming will likely tell you that he was separately working on the same scoop track all along, and that once Chavez posted, he shared what he had been preparing. But the rule of the Hollywood biz Internet is that if you get beaten to the punch, no matter whether you're already in the same ring, it's common courtesy to acknowledge the journalist who officially broke it first. Cut to 6:30 p.m. PT last night. In the wake of the perceived Spider-Man slight and other similar situations involving Deadline, the Twittersphere was primed to attack. That's exactly what happened within moments of Deadline's other co-EIC Nellie Andreeva posting a very clumsily headlined article about a mainline trend in this year's TV pilot season. A majority of the objectionable and shocking observations in Andreeva's piece come from the talent agents and personal managers she sourced. Things like: "Basically 50% of the roles in a pilot have to be ethnic, and the mandate goes all the way down to guest parts," one talent representative said. However, thanks to the terrible headline, some additionally awkward Andreeva commentary paragraphs and the overall need of a feature like this to be handled with extra-special editing care (which it apparently wasn't), all social media hell broke loose. There would have been bedlam no matter what; but the extra level of animosity directed at Deadline in the past 24 hours has a lot to do, also, with the site's perceived elitism. Furthermore, Deadline's decision to stick with the casting industry jargon term of "ethnic/ethnics" and use that term throughout without quote demarcations only served to compound the outrage. Update (March 30): Deadline co-EIC Fleming led off his latest weekly Sunday chat with Peter Bart by apologizing for the Andreeva item's "unfortunate headline" and use of the term "ethnic." He also admitted that in his absence, the article should have been more nimbly handled: A perfect storm of events left us vulnerable, including me choosing the worst time to be zonked from a 22-hour return flight from New Zealand, and normally smart editors on duty failing to respond decisively even after a torrent of hostile comments rolled in.

Fishbowl

Deadline Haters Get the Gift of 'Ethnic Castings'

Nellie Andreeva's misstep compounded by accumulated blogger resentment.

Richard Horgan

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Richard Horgan