If The Journal and The Sun had a baby...

March 31, 2006 12:15 PM

Elizabeth Spiers, of Gawker fame, has a new site, Dealbreaker, which bills itself as "an online business tabloid and Wall Street gossip blog." Content-free snark, with links to articles of interest to Wall Street fanboys? Oh, Elizabeth, you steal my heart. But, perhaps just mine.
posted by rush (17 comments total)

They've been dropping hints about this for awhile. The thing that made Gawker, Defamer and other gossip sites so intriguing were the good looking people involved. Wall Street does not have the same look requirements as the media and Hollywood -- thus some balding analyst and Bank of America doing coke and sleeping with a model is less interesting than Whitney Houston's crack den.
posted by geoff. at 12:22 PM on March 31, 2006

Ugh, too inside-y...
posted by SweetJesus at 12:33 PM on March 31, 2006

yup...it's iffy, and some things she won't ever be able to print, lawsuitwise--the best (and juiciest) Wall Street stuff is always illegal. Unless that's the strategy--get attention by getting sued a lot?

(she's also an oldtime mefite--lizs, rush)
posted by amberglow at 12:34 PM on March 31, 2006

The thing that made Gawker, Defamer and other gossip sites so intriguing were the good looking people involved

Are you saying that Elisabeth Spiers isn't attractive enough to keep it intriguing? After looking at the website linked to in the post, I'd disagree.
posted by dios at 12:41 PM on March 31, 2006

No I'm saying the average 55-year old banker is not attractive enough, well no where near the intrigue of hearing Lindsay Lohan and her mom picking up guys at Bungalow-8.
posted by geoff. at 12:47 PM on March 31, 2006

Huh. Interesting, amberglow.
posted by rush at 1:03 PM on March 31, 2006

I see. Gotcha geoff.
posted by dios at 1:30 PM on March 31, 2006

Having first encountered her writing in Gawker, I think it's typical of Elizabeth Spiers to blather about how unphotogenic she is, in the very same blog entry where she posts a link to photos of herself.
posted by jayder at 3:00 PM on March 31, 2006

The thing that made Gawker, Defamer and other gossip sites so intriguing were the good looking people involved

Yeah, intriguing to you and a lot of others, maybe, but if you know all (or even some) of these banking/finance people, you might be interested. I, like 99.999% of the population, have never heard of any of them and have zero interest. But there's something about capturing a very rich and influential group of people's attention that makes it easier to launch other things.

In other words, I'm sure this isn't the only blog Spiers is planning.
posted by cell divide at 3:11 PM on March 31, 2006

Wait... are you saying that Gawker was ever intriguing?!!

I'd love to take up some of my precious time to check out this site, but Xeni Jardin said that she'd let me watch her toenails dry on the webcam.
posted by insomnia_lj at 4:15 PM on March 31, 2006

It has to be said: that Spiers chick can not write. I don't know why anyone thinks otherwise.

Gawker and all the Denton sites give me the creeps.

Plus I hate the word "snark."
posted by maggiemaggie at 5:09 PM on March 31, 2006

There are Wall Street fanboys?! Clearly those people have never actually had a drink with an investment banker.
posted by mckenney at 5:31 PM on March 31, 2006

Yeah, but geoff, Wonkette (DC politics) is another Gawker-umbrella blog. There aren't a whole lot of pretties in that business, and Wonkette's doing all right. I think this could survive if it finds its target audience quickly.
posted by booksandlibretti at 5:57 PM on March 31, 2006

Anyone notice the fetal wiki on the site? This was the first page I came to --

Frank Quattrone (1956) is an absolute rock-star, notorious for playing bass on Daznig's classic hit "Mother."

'Daznig!' Sounds like an appropriate exclamation to blurt when you see a ballsy (and potentially dumb?) move like this one on a site. Seems like the wiki ain't really worky yet.
posted by greggish at 9:08 PM on March 31, 2006

Money is sex for ugly people.
posted by dhartung at 9:45 PM on March 31, 2006

yeah i'm pretty sure that doesn't make any sense.
posted by greggish at 5:35 AM on April 1, 2006

What booksandlibretti said. I've never liked the snarky, utterly cynical detachment of Wonkette. But it seems to be based on a simple premise: Members of any given specialized group love to read about themselves, even trashy gossip.

It helps if you throw a soupcon of sex into the mix. And the former student-government geeks who populate DC won't notice if you do so in a crude and transparently manipulative way -- they're not particularly sexually sophisticated, so you don't have to be either.

Wonkette has actually helped me understand just how horribly incestuous, self-important, petty, and clueless the inside-the-beltway culture is... and not because the blog has provided an outside perspective -- indeed, because it's mostly done just the opposite.

I haven't read Dealbreaker yet (I can't even load the site right now), so I can't pass any judgment. I know there are still some kinks being worked out in terms of the writing and the editorial staff.

It'll be interesting to see if a business blog can work, tho it's a snoozer of a concept to me personally. I am neither interested in the intricacies of finance, nor tremendously ambitious about getting wired into the world of money and power. But I guess I'm not the target audience.

MaggieMaggie: Elizabeth Spiers hasn't worked for Denton for a long time -- Dealbreaker is not under the Gawker Media umbrella.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 11:58 PM on April 1, 2006