PERSON: Elizabeth Spiers

Founder

Elizabeth Spiers (born December 11, 1976) is an American Web publisher and journalist, the founder of Gawker.com, a media gossip blog, and of Dead Horse Media, which has published blogs and websites in the fields of Wall Street, the law, fashion industry, and business management. (The business site has closed.) She has also written for traditional journalism and published in mainline media outlets.<br> <br> Spiers left Dead Horse Media in 2007 over differences about new properties. From February 2011 until August 2012 she was the editor of the New York Observer.<br> <br> Spiers started working in journalism as a contributing writer and editor at New York magazine. She has written for the New York Times, Salon.com and New York Post, among other publications.<br> <br> Spiers is noted as the founding editor of Gawker.com, an influential New York media gossip blog. She worked briefly before that as the editor-in-chief of mediabistro.com, a site offering resources for media professionals.<br> <br> Since then, Spiers has founded a number of notable blog sites through her company, Dead Horse Media (Note: as in the saying, “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.”] Dead Horse Media has produced Dealbreaker, 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 to BusinessWeek.<br> <br> Jared Kushner hired her as the editor of the New York Observer in February 2011. She resigned from the paper in August 2012.<br> <br> Spiers has been a guest speaker at various media and technology conferences. She has also been a guest commentator on CNN, Fox News, CBS Marketwatch, MSNBC and VH1.<br> <br> — Wikipedia