Elizabeth Spiers | |
|---|---|
 Spiers in 2003 | |
| Born | (1976-12-11)December 11, 1976 (age 48) Wetumpka, Alabama, U.S. |
| Education | Edgewood Academy |
| Alma mater | Duke University |
| Occupation(s) | Publisher and journalist |
| Known for | Founding editor ofGawker |
| Website | www |
Elizabeth Spiers (born December 11, 1976) is an American web publisher and journalist, the founding editor ofGawker, a media gossipblog.
From February 2011 until August 2012, she was the editor ofThe New York Observer.[1]
Spiers was born inWetumpka, Alabama. She attendedEdgewood Academy, which she later characterized as asegregation academy.[2]
Spiers has written that she was “raped in college by an ostensibly nice guy who was not a stranger to me.”[3]
After graduating fromDuke University in 1999 with a degree inpublic policy, Spiers headed toWall Street to work in finance, but soon became involved in the fast-growing blog industry.
Spiers began in journalism as the founding editor of Gawker.com and later became a contributing writer and editor atNew York magazine. She has written forThe New York Times,Salon,Fortune,Fast Company andThe New York Post, among other publications, and was an early blogger at GNXP.[4]
She worked briefly after that as theeditor-in-chief ofmediabistro.com, a site offering resources for media professionals. Since then, Spiers has founded a number of blog sites through her company, Dead Horse Media (as in the proverb "don't beat a dead horse").The New York Times'DealBook wrote of her in 2006: "It is clear that an online empire is on Elizabeth Spiers's mind."[5] Dead Horse Media has producedDealbreaker, a gossip website about Wall Street;AbovetheLaw, a blog about law;Fashionista, a gossip site about fashion; and Supermogul, a now defunct business management site. Spiers left Dead Horse Media abruptly on April 19, 2007, citing differences with her partners over launching new properties, according toBusinessWeek.[6]
Jared Kushner hired Spiers as the editor ofThe New York Observer in February 2011.[7] She resigned from the paper in August 2012.[1] Spiers was the editorial director ofFlavorwire from 2012 to 2016.[8]