SELECTED PROFILES
: Blogger Aims to Lift Lid on Wall Street Earnings (April 5, 2006)
Dealbreaker founder Elizabeth Spiers, the first editor of celebrity and media gossip blog Gawker.com, said she hoped to start breaking original news about Wall Street personalities and scandals. "It could be anything you might talk about at a cocktail party," she said of the site's news ambitions..
"30 Under 30: Elizabeth Spiers" (May 2006)
The name Elizabeth Spiers is practically synonymous with “blog.” After working as a buy-side analyst, Elizabeth delivered sound bites for the media on Mediabistro.com and Gawker.com, which she helped found with Nick Denton. Though that was fun and all, she really wanted to use her knowledge of Wall Street in the same vain. Now she does just that on Dealbreaker.com, a blog that has firms like Morgan Stanley, which blocks its URL from employee computers, afraid, very afraid of the diminutive firebrand.
"Public Lives: Master of the Self-Referential Realm of Blogs" (December 23, 2003)
Her raised-eyebrow approach to the sacred syllogisms of Manhattan culture and gossip made a blog called gawker.com so popular that Entertainment Weekly called it the It blog and The Guardian, a British newspaper, quoted a fan as saying it was "like living in New York without paying the rent."
Gawking at Gawker (July 17, 2003)
I'm surprised at how much about Spiers's personality I'd assumed from the voice of her writing. In print she is the queen of snark, consistently acerbic, intelligent, and supremely hip in her daily criticism of the uniquely Manhattan-centric universe of media, gossip, social climbing and conspicuous decadence... But in person Spiers is soft spoken, friendly and accessible, and with a slight Southern accent that betrays her rural Alabama roots. Her easy smile is hard to reconcile with her online acid tongue.
DEAD HORSE MEDIA PRESS
"Wall Street's Junior Set Tells All: Banks Meet Blogs" (May 25, 2006)
Leveraged Sell-Out, DealBreaker and a half-dozen more online diaries are gaining popularity among young bankers. The sites blend blogging, a regular habit for Wall Street's college- age summer interns and entry-level employees, with an older tradition of insider memoirs such as "Liar's Poker,'' Michael Lewis's tale of Salomon Brothers bond traders in the 1980s.
"Wall Street Gets Snarky" (April 21, 2006)
Now Spiers, 29, has combined her business acumen, eye for gossip, and considerable writing ability to create Dealbreaker.com, an “online business tabloid and Wall Street gossip blog,” which she launched last month. It’s the first of what will be a commercial blog network published and operated by Spiers — much like Nick Denton’s Gawker Media, which includes sites like the Hollywood gossip blog Defamer and the gadget blog Gizmodo. Spiers admits it’s not exactly a new idea. “What we’re doing is a traditional media model,” she says. “We’re just creating content and selling ads against it.”
"A New Deal for Gawker's Spiers" (April 17, 2006)
Call it The Daily Show for the CNBC set. That's how Elizabeth Spiers, a former New York magazine reporter and founding editor of infamous celebrity-gossip blog Gawker, describes her new, satirical Wall Street blog, DealBreaker. "The press does not talk about the things you talk about at cocktail parties," says the 29-year-old Duke graduate, who worked as an investment analyst for several hedge funds before launching Gawker in 2002. "Most mainstream financial coverage seems to imply you need to cover business in a deadly serious manner"...
What's Online (April 8, 2006)
DealBreaker operates on the idea that Wall Street types are at least as worthy of mockery as the media types Gawker makes fun of, or the politicians Wonkette takes on. The content bears this out. On his new CNBC talk show, Michael Eisner shows himself to be ''a charisma black hole,'' Ms. Spiers wrote. ''On a scale of one to charismatic, Eisner is a negative 10 Clintons. It's painful.'' Wall Street may be hungry for such material -- at least the busy comments sections seems to indicate that. Some of the most popular posts, in terms of reader comments, are written by ''Muffie Benson-Perella,'' an obnoxious, deliciously fictional columnist who wields her credentials and whose name and bio manage to make fun of about half a dozen people and institutions in fewer than 70 words...
Elizabeth Spiers: Launches Aren't Fun (April 5, 2006)
With Dealbreaker, Elizabeth Spiers — the founding editor of both Gawker and some of mediabistro's blogs — is at it again. This time, Spiers has her unapologetic periscope locked on the catty, sometimes-cantankerous world of Wall Street gossip.
Elizabeth Spiers: Blog Publishing is a 'Traditional Media Model' (March 27, 2006)
Elizabeth Spiers, the founding editor of the infamous media gossip blog Gawker, is planning to launch her own network of blogs. The first title, Dealbreaker, a Wall Street gossip blog, is set to open Wednesday.
The 'Daily Show' for Traders (March 24, 2006)
Insider dealing is about to take on a whole new meaning on Wall Street. The founding editor of New York's most popular media gossip blog is turning her attention to the money men...
: Page Six: Gawk At This (January 25, 2006)
ORIGINAL Gawker editrix Elizabeth Spiers is hoping to give her old employer a much-needed run for its money. Spiers will launch dealbreaker.com, a Wall Street gossip blog, in March..."To Protect and to Rock."
Bloggers come to the Street, but is anyone reading? (February 9, 2006)
Spiers' track record suggest [sic] Dealbreaker will become the top site for Wall Street gossip in short order.
Blogs to Riches (February 20, 2006)
[Elizabeth Spiers] is arguably the most famous professional blogger, since she invented its dominant mode: a titillating post delivered with a snarky kicker, casual profanity, and genuine fan-girl enthusiasm - sonnets made of dirt.
And previously:
FAINT, DAMNING PRAISE:
· "not particularly concerned with being polite" Dishing It Out: A New Breed of Columnist Goes for the Jugular [Variety, April 21, 2005]· "Spiers memorably invented bitchy phrases" New Kids on the Blog [The Guardian, March 6, 2005]
· "she's never tried to plan her life or career" Mediabistro's Spiers Puts Own Spin on Blog World [PR Week, February 28, 2005]
· "a wry Alabamian" Duel for the Dirt [The New York Times, January 30, 2005]
· "Ms. Spiers is credited with establishing that site's...snarky, tone..." A New Direction for Mediabistro [The New York Sun, January 26, 2005]
· "with publisher Kyle Crafton stroking her ego like a prized show dog (see below), she's bound to resume performing her favorite tricks" Ones to Watch [WWD, October 15, 2004]
· [On Kate Lee, Spiers's agent:] "while she loves her bloggers, and has faith in them, it can be difficult to get them to be productive" A Book in You [The New Yorker, May 31, 2004]
· "Founding Gawker editor Elizabeth Spiers delighted in the journalistic nihilism of her blog" The Heaving Pukes Who Write Gawker and Wonkette [Slate, March 11, 2004]
· "Spiers lost her indie cred when she moved on to the New York magazine" Blogging Off [Village Voice, March 1, 2004]
· "Spiers'...career trajectory...may be difficult to duplicate, but it's not impossible" An Unlikely Source of New Writing Talent: Blogs [Chicago Tribune]
· "a hometown girl Edgewood Alum Blog Guru in NYC [The Montgomery Advertiser]
· "Spiers pulls out some familiar comparisons for those outside the Gawker loop: "We're like SPY, but not as funny...'" She Posts When Others Just Gawk [Westchester Journal News]
· "Back in her old hometown of Wetumpka, even her folks aren't quite sure exactly what Elizabeth Spiers does." Wetumpka Woman Makes Gawker a Talker [The Birmingham News, August 24, 2003]
· "a local magazine's former party reporter" On the Carpet [The New York Observer, June 20, 2005]
· "I offered to pay her $40K, split equity in the company," says Calacanis, who still can't believe that Spiers went to a pulp dinosaur instead. "She wanted credentials! It was the worst decision made by a media blogger to date. Now she's the 50th feature writer of New York magazine." How Can I Sex Up This Blog Business? [Wired magazine, June 2003]
· "an agoraphobic Dorothy Parker" The Trend Report [Departures magazine, November/December 2003]
· "Spiers was...a cheerleader" Public Lives: Master of the Self-Referential Realm of Blogs [The New York Times, December 23, 2003]
· "She's shorter than I'd expected..." Gawking at Gawker [Mediabistro, July 17, 2003]
· "She's since moved on..." Best of New York 2003: Best Gossip [Village Voice, 2003]
· "As for those weapons of mass destruction, she insists she's very, very close to finding them..." Blog, Blog, Blog [New York Magazine, November 10, 2003]
· "Hey! The New York Times is really fucking up these days. [Spiers] just wrote something for them..." Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Gawker's Elizabeth Spiers [The Black Table]
· "Ms. Spiers confesses that she occasionally has serious thoughts" A New York State of Blog [The New York Times, May 18, 2003]
· "A recently defected securities analyst" On the Verge [The Observer UK, March 23, 2003]
