Elizabeth Spiers

Elizabeth Spiers is an entrepreneur, journalist and digital media expert. She is acting Editorial Director for Flavorpill Productions and until Fall of 2012 was the editor in chief of The New York Observer and editorial director of Observer Media Group. You can read about recent developments at the Observer here.

(You can download a Word version of her résumé here.)

As a journalist she has contributed to a variety of publications including Slate, New York Magazine, The New Republic Online, Salon.com, The New York Times, The New York Sun, Forbes and The New York Post, (including the notorious Page Six, which was actually quite fun). She has also been a columnist at Fast Company and Fortune, writing about marketing and finance.

Her upcoming debut novel, And They All Die in the End, will be published by Riverhead (an imprint of Penguin Books). She also teaches a new media class for SVA’s Design Criticism MFA program and is a Young Leaders Forum Fellow with the National Committee on United States-China Relations.

Previously, she was the Publisher and Founder of Breaking Media, an online media company, which produces DealBreaker.com (a Wall Street tabloid), AboveTheLaw.com (a legal tabloid) and Fashionista.com (a fashion tabloid).

She was named one of Columbia Journalism Review’s Women to Watch in 2012, one of Fast Company’s “Most Influential Women in Technology” in 2010, one the Duke “Power 50” in 2009, of Interview magazine’s “Pop A-List: 50 To Watch”, one of Dazed and Confused magazine’s “Digital 50″ in 2007, Institutional Investor’s “30 Under 30″ in 2006, one of Women’s Wear Daily’s “Ones to Watch” in October of 2004 and one of AlwaysOn/Technorati’s Open Media 100 in June of 2005.

Until November of 2005, she was the editor-in-chief of mediabistro.com, where she launched six new blogs and implemented a 90-day site redesign. Prior to mediabistro, she was a contributing writer at New York magazine, covering entertainment, media, and business and editing the magazine’s Intelligencer section.

Spiers was previously the founding editor of Gawker.com, Gawker Media’s flagship site about “the darker Manhattan-centric themes: class warfare as recreational sport; pathological status obsession; and the complete, total, and wholly unapologetic embrace of decadence.” Gawker was named to Entertainment Weekly’s 2003 “IT list”, one of Time magazine’s “Top 50 Websites” for 2003, a “Best Media Blog” (2003) by Forbes, and a “Best of Breed” online news site by the New York New Media Association. Spiers was named “Best Gossip” by the Village Voice (“Best of New York”) in 2003.

Spiers has launched new media sites for a variety of companies, including Flavorwire.com, Crushable.com, TheGloss.com, Blisstree.com and a number of blogs for mediabistro.com. She is an advisor to Flavorpill Productions, Halogen Networks, b5media, Counsyl, OfAKind, Cursor and Wall Street Cheat Sheet.

Prior to Gawker, Spiers was a buy-side financial analyst focusing on small cap tech equities and (prior to that) early stage venture capital. Spiers earned a BA in Public Policy and Political Science from Duke University.

She has spoken at various media and technology conferences and been a guest commentator on CNN, Fox News, CBS Marketwatch, MSNBC, VH1 and NPR. She also contributed to Bookmark Now, an anthology about reading and technology, published by Basic Books in 2005, and Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys, an anthology published by Dutton in April of 2007.