The Hollywood Reporter

The Hollywood Reporter is presented as a trade publication whose coverage made The New York Times’ still-unpublished investigation of Harvey Weinstein visible to the public. Its report disclosed the behind-the-scenes fight over the planned story, changing the conditions under which Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey were trying to protect their sources and complete their work.

Reporting on the planned investigation

The reporters encountered The Hollywood Reporter’s coverage while continuing to work on their article. Its headline asked, “Is The New York Times about to expose damaging information on Harvey Weinstein?” The accompanying report, citing multiple sources familiar with the behind-the-scenes battle, said Weinstein had enlisted attorneys and crisis managers in recent weeks and deployed them against The New York Times over a planned story about his personal behavior.

The article offered few details about the investigation itself, but mentioned The New Yorker’s efforts as well. In the same burst of coverage, Variety published a similar account. Weinstein told Variety, “I’ve not been aware of this,” and added, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, honestly.” He also joked, “The story sounds so good I want to buy the movie rights.” The account treats these public denials as a stark contrast with the reported campaign against the newspaper; the remarks quoted here were made to Variety, not The Hollywood Reporter.

Exposure and consequences

The reports placed Kantor and Twohey’s project on public display before the investigation appeared. As people began guessing which sources had spoken to the reporters, sources could become nervous; the work was also exposed to competitors. The publicity arrived when the reporters needed close control of the project, and instead made that control harder to maintain. Dean Baquet captured the newsroom’s alarm in an email: “This is bad, gang.”

Messages from people who had seen the trade-publication stories began filling the reporters’ phones and inboxes. Kantor and Twohey largely did not respond. They stayed with the article itself, reworking its lede, targeting problem areas, and carrying out David McCraw’s instructions for further fine-tuning. In this account, The Hollywood Reporter’s significance lies not in revealing the investigation’s full findings, but in helping turn a private reporting effort into a publicly visible confrontation before publication.