Nikki Finke's $10 million payday

Who says you can't get rich blogging? Showbiz reporter extraordinaire Nikki Finke did -- to the tune of eight figures.

After fielding "many offers from major corporations and media companies," Finke, a former reporter for Newsweek, the New York Post and the Los Angeles Times, among others, has sold her three-year-old blog, Deadline Hollywood Daily, to Mail.com Media Corp., a digital-media company whose properties include portal Mail.com, HollywoodLife.com, OnCars.com and Movieline.com. Terms of the sale were not disclosed, but a source with knowledge of the details says the price was around $10 million (although Paid Content's Rafat Ali says it was somewhat lower, in the seven-figure range, and other observers who know the new-media deal market consider the $10 million figure improbably high). That covers the asset purchase as well a long-term contract for Finke's services -- "long-term" meaning something upwards of five years.