Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz could be ready to pull his investment in The Wrap, the show business website of highly-caffeinated former New York Times reporter Sharon Waxman.
Reliable sources (are there any other kind?) say Schultz reached out to Jay Penske, who owns Deadline Hollywood and Variety, to gauge if he had any interest in buying out Schultz, and the answer was “no.”
Penske already has enough trouble keeping the peace between Variety and Deadline’s Nikki Finke, who griped to the Los Angeles Times last month, “It just doesn’t seem fair [for Penske] to compete against my own company.”
The unhappy Finke — in an apparent job action — has nearly stopped writing. Mathematical sources say she’s been responsible for only 7 percent of recent posts.