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Early Addition
Perennial Gothamist favorite Elizabeth Spiers has returned to blogging for the second time with Dealbreaker, a Wall Street finance blog. Expectations are set very high-- after her work at Gawker and Mediabistro, people are expecting a home-run. Jason Calacanis, for one, is bullish: "Anway, if I could buy stock in a person I would buy EZSP..." and Blogebrity has pre-lubricated and suspended all publishing in preparation for the launch: "Years from now, you'll want to be able to tell your kids you were someplace cool when the blog publishing world changed forever."
Gawker loves the site right out of the gate ("Yes, it would seem Spiers has quite a handle on this blogging business"), but we're not entirely convinced by this prose. For instance:
My father was beside himself when he heard I had applied to business school.Being fairly good at predicting the sorts of things that would cause an outburst from my father by that time, I had wisely gone through the process without a peep to either of my parents, even as they pestered me about what I was going to do with my life. This was unusual, as neither of them really aspired to anything like a career of substance for me.
I suppose if I had asked, my father would have grudgingly written a fat check to start an art gallery or a boutique for me and cajoled his, admittedly substantial, social circle to buy things they did not want or need in order to give me "a start." In this case, "a start" was code for "find a husband to support you so we don’t have to."
Preach on sister! We can totally relate-- this whole boutique-gallery-husband track has really been wearing us out! What do you think? Do the first posts measure up? And does New York need another blog targeted at the super-rich? Sock it to us!
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Huh. This was the first thing I've read at Dealbreaker, and perhaps the last. What kind of vapid bullshit crap is this? There are few things more insipid than "fiction"--too weak to be memoir, it's the tag you put on reminiscences that don't rise to the level of personal essay. Blech.
Muffie, please go back to whatever corporate enclave you hoover down cash from.
If this is what everyone is waiting for from Spiers...blech.
what the world needs is more self starting rebels who will go to BUSINESS SCHOOL instead of taking daddy's easy-way-out cash.
Who is this person? Why should we care?
Ah, Jake. What would a new launch be without a gratuitously nasty post from you? I almost registered DealBreakerist.com just to make sure. That said, where are all these blogs targeted to the super-rich? I want to link to them.
And "huh" - That might've been too insidery, but explaining it defeats the purpose, so I'm not gonna.
Um, I'm pretty sure Muffie is actually a made up character - Benson-Perella is an amalgam of two rather famous investment bank names. Although what the hell her fictional musings have to do with high finance I do not know.
I am in love with Elizabeth Spiers. Won't read her new blog, but I would eat broken glass from between her toes.
"But we're not entirely convinced by this prose." Uh, hello, pot. This is kettle calling. I think Gothamist--the veritable NY1 of the blogosphere--should be the last site to ever pooh-pooh someone's prose. Anyway, it's not the prose you seem to have a problem with, but the sentiment.
Snobs vs. slobs!
Does anyone know why I can't actually see the dealbreaker.com page?
I get an intro message, and you can read some more text if you highlight the page, but I can't find a link to the actual content.
What am I doing wrong?
Pots and kettles, Bryce? Gothamist is like the freakin' Blacksmith of Poor Prose.
Is this a good place to pick a fight with Rob Sterling?
"That might've been too insidery, but explaining it defeats the purpose, so I'm not gonna."
And with that the book is closed on why no one needs crap like this--you seem like a sharp woman, so I'm not certain why you'd waste your life this way.
Still, it is your time to waste. Enjoy!
We're just happy Liz has finally learned to keep her mouth closed for photos. Denton looks like he's gotten veneers recently, why can't she?
Oh, that last comment was so deliciously snarky....
Right now, honestly, the site is a bit underwhelming. Maybe it's because the buildup and that I had expected a bit more from Spiers.
If I'm stuck for 14 hours a day at the office, working on some stupid model and I want to temporarily remove myself from this place, why should I be reading this? I'd rather be looking at some incredibly retarded video on YouTube or even a look at Fark or Metafilter or even collegehumor.com or almost any other site. The fictional parody is a bit amusing, and I respect the writing, but its place isn't on a blog like this. We have no use for it. I was hoping for something smarter and funnier, but maybe also informative, like Dealbook with no withheld punches or Wall Street Journal and other ibanking topics completely dissected and exposed by humor. And where's the purported gossip? Where's the scandals and the swindlings? It's all over the place. Wall Street is full of dumb, greedy people who got the in bc they're old frat brothers and ex-jocks, and they're doing completely idiotic things on a daily basis. A bit more snooping, please.
Maybe Spiers wants to distance herself from her Gawker phase, but a Gawker for Wall Street would have been a homerun. There is so much material and potential.
And the layout and design could have been better. I'm not the most creative person in the world, but c'mon.
That said, this is only the first day, and maybe things are still being worked out. I'll be checking in to see how things are. I like Spiers and wish her the best.
There are far too many bloggers who really, truly believe they're "witty", and it's a shame. Why don't she and her attention-starved contemporaries open a book and realize how ignorant and annoying they are. And she also needs to stop posing like she's in a prom gown magazine.
The best gig she had that matched her best was the Media Bistro job. Gawker didn't pay enough, she's not enough of a true writer to have lasted at New York Magazine. But Media Bistro allowed her to occupy a unique space in between. I guess she couldn't deal with being second in line to the queen of the house. I definitely applaud her going for making her own site, but really I was never impressed that Spiers is what made Gawker. Sure it was witty reading when she was there, but there are dozens of witty blogs out there. Denton is the behind the scenes hype man and business man who made things happen. I doubt Spiers knows how to imitate Denton well enough to match his success. Alas, her investors are betting differently. Hopefully she got a nice upfront payment that she's stashed away. Too bad, if she had accepted Jason's offer when he was groveling and begging to sign her, Spiers might be in the 7 figure club now like Peter Rojas.
The real interesting story is what's going to happen with Gothamist...
"Muffie Benson-Perella"
Are you kiddin' me? THere are actually people named 'Muffie'? I thought that was only in movies and on The Apprentice.
I think you have to have at least $500K to be named Muffie.
www.forgotten-ny.com
As someone that is super-rich, works on wall street, and works everyday with white people that have kids named Muffie, and that go to Vassar, this blog is the weakest and most uninteresting entry into the blog world targeted at Wall Street. It's clear that Spiers knows very little about anything Wall Street related, and is a poser wanna-be, with no chance of getting that Mrs Degree she so clearly is looking for.
The first step in getting a life of your own, is to pick up a clue.