Deadline Has Brought Reporter Anita Busch Out Of Retirement
In an effort to beef up the ranks of Deadline since Nikki Finke's departure, Penske Media Corporation has announced that they will be resurrecting veteran journalist Anita Busch's career, a little over a decade after she left reporting.
Deadline's new editors Mike Fleming Jr. and Nellie Andreeva reported today that Busch will be joining the site as a film editor, stating "We thought Anita had put the entertainment business in her rearview mirror, but we jumped at the chance when we discovered that she wanted to return to journalism." In what is likely a jab at Finke, who founded Deadline, they went on to share: "We can't wait to see her put her mark on box office and the film coverage here at Deadline." The weekend box office reports were Finke's signature posts, and the only posts she continued writing during her battle with PMC boss Jay Penske.
Busch, who worked at Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, The LA Times, and Entertainment Weekly, is best known for her entanglements with former CAA head, Michael Ovitz. On June 20, 2002, private investigator Anthony Pellicano hired a criminal to smash in Busch's car windown, and leave behind a dead fish, a cryptic white rose, and a note that read "Stop." At the time, Busch was working on two separate investigative articles—one on Steven Seagal and his alleged mob connections, and one on Ovitz. Though Busch always suspected Ovitz, it wasn't until Pellicano was sent to prison on separate charges of racketeering and wiretapping in 2006, that she was able to connect the dots. The case against Pellicano revealed that Ovitz had hired him back in 2002, a few months prior to the Busch incident. Six years after those dots were connected, Busch finally sued Ovitz this year over the Pellicano incident.
In the last few years, Busch has been working as an advocate for victims of crime, after losing a family member in the Aurora, Colorado theater shooting.