Billy Wilkerson is Spinning Like a Top

Billy Wilkerson must be spinning like a top in his grave at the news. His baby, The Hollywood Reporter is disappearing into cyberspace. I'm with you Billy, I can't imagine not holding the paper in my hands. Grabbing THR and scanning down past the red logo for my byline always took my breath away. There have been few greater thrills in my life than walking in the doors at 6715 Sunset Blvd. each morning and seeing The Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety on my desk, fearful that Cynthia Kirk at Variety might have the same story or if I had scooped her. The ten years I spent at THR as its music editor were heady and like a rocket ride into the stratosphere where superstars sing, dance, hold your hand and take you with them. I love that publication more than anyone could imagine. Because of it, I met everyone who mattered in the music business, on their way up and on their way down. Covering the business of music, I went around the world so many times, to every European country at least once, to France and England 20 times, to Santo Domingo, to Japan, to all the Islands in the Caribbean. I once counted and checking off the countries went up to 30. I met the greatest performers in the world and some became friends, some are to this day. Everybody wanted to be in the pages of the publication that often only numbered 16 pages. What Billy Wilkerson had created when he started the FIRST entertainment trade daily was extraordinary and way more powerful than even he could have imagined. Yet Billy was a visionary, and I am certain his vision did not include seeing the paper disappear. I'm one sad Ruth Adkins Robinson.