Cameron Diaz, Tobey Maguire, Julia Roberts, Adam Sandler, Kate Winslet. If you are a consumer you read about these and other movie stars in People Magazine. But if you’re an industry insider (or just want to pretend that you are), you get the latest on them from the bible of the entertainment industry: Variety. And if you don’t want to pay for this information, you sign-up to receive Variety’s free daily email newsletter, Variety Headline News.

Full disclosure: Back in 2001, I developed and implemented an email strategy for Variety. I revamped their one existing email newsletter (an ancestor of today’s Headline News) and developed more than a half dozen other email titles for them. Their email program has gone through many changes since then, which makes it easy to review the current Headline News with an objective eye.

The sign-up for this email newsletter appears in Figure 1. The grammar could be better but you get the idea. Variety “builds” each day’s issue specifically for each reader, pulling in content dynamically based on the topic(s) chosen. If I check “News Headlines” and all the other boxes, I get top stories, hot topic and media jobs along with content from each of these topic areas. A reader who was only interested in “News Headlines” and “Legit” (Variety’s term for live theater) would get the same top stories, hot topic and media jobs plus the “Legit” content.

Figure 1: Sign-up

I reviewed a week’s worth of Variety Headline News (5 issues, including all topic areas) spanning from March 19th to the 23rd. “Breaking Top Headline” email alerts are also part of the News Headlines subscription; while none were delivered during this timeframe I reviewed a few that had been sent earlier in the month.

Variety Headline News turned in Academy Award-worthy performances in the areas of:

• Their footer, which hit all the marks for what should be there
• The from line, which is great except for one little glitch
• Their consistent send schedule and fulfillment of the content promises made at sign-up

But they should receive Razzie nominations for:

• Their first screen, which doesn’t include a table of contents, engaging opening paragraph or any sign of human involvement
• The preview pane doesn’t pull the reader in
• Their efforts to ensure deliverability, where they neglect to make a white list request