Elizabeth Spiers is the Publisher and Editor of DealBreaker.com, an online business tabloid and Wall Street gossip blog. Her debut novel, And They All Die in the End, will be published by Riverhead in 2007.

Until November of 2005, she was the editor-in-chief of mediabistro.com. She was named 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.

Prior to mediabistro, she was a contributing writer and editor at New York magazine, covering entertainment, media, and business.

Spiers was previously the founding editor of Gawker.com, a weblog 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.

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

She has also written for Salon.com, Radar, Black Book, The Face, The New York Times, and The New York Post, including Page Six. She has spoken at various media and technology conferences (i.e., Harvard Law School's "Bloggercon," Columbia Journalism School's panel on alternative media sources, Jupiter Research's Blogging Conference) and been a guest commentator on CNN, Fox News, CBS Marketwatch, MSNBC and VH1.

[Photo credit: Paul Sarkis]

Faint, Damning Praise:

· "not particularly concerned with being polite" Dishing It Out: A New Breed of Columnist Goes for the Jugular [Variety, April 21, 2005]
· "Spiers memorably invented bitchy phrases" New Kids on the Blog [The Guardian, March 6, 2005]
· "she's never tried to plan her life or career" Mediabistro's Spiers Puts Own Spin on Blog World [PR Week, February 28, 2005]
· "a wry Alabamian" Duel for the Dirt [The New York Times, January 30, 2005]
· "Ms. Spiers is credited with establishing that site's...snarky, tone..." A New Direction for Mediabistro [The New York Sun, January 26, 2005]
· "with publisher Kyle Crafton stroking her ego like a prized show dog (see below), she's bound to resume performing her favorite tricks" Ones to Watch [WWD, October 15, 2004]
· [On Kate Lee, Spiers's agent:] "while she loves her bloggers, and has faith in them, it can be difficult to get them to be productive" A Book in You [The New Yorker, May 31, 2004]
· "Founding Gawker editor Elizabeth Spiers delighted in the journalistic nihilism of her blog" The Heaving Pukes Who Write Gawker and Wonkette [Slate, March 11, 2004]
· "Spiers lost her indie cred when she moved on to the New York magazine" Blogging Off [Village Voice, March 1, 2004]
· "Spiers'...career trajectory...may be difficult to duplicate, but it's not impossible" An Unlikely Source of New Writing Talent: Blogs [Chicago Tribune]
· "a hometown girl Edgewood Alum Blog Guru in NYC [The Montgomery Advertiser]
· "Spiers pulls out some familiar comparisons for those outside the Gawker loop: "We're like SPY, but not as funny...'" She Posts When Others Just Gawk [Westchester Journal News]
· "Back in her old hometown of Wetumpka, even her folks aren't quite sure exactly what Elizabeth Spiers does." Wetumpka Woman Makes Gawker a Talker [The Birmingham News, August 24, 2003]
· "a local magazine's former party reporter" On the Carpet [The New York Observer, June 20, 2005]
· "I offered to pay her $40K, split equity in the company," says Calacanis, who still can't believe that Spiers went to a pulp dinosaur instead. "She wanted credentials! It was the worst decision made by a media blogger to date. Now she's the 50th feature writer of New York magazine." How Can I Sex Up This Blog Business? [Wired magazine, June 2003]
· "an agoraphobic Dorothy Parker" The Trend Report [Departures magazine, November/December 2003]
· "Spiers was...a cheerleader" Public Lives: Master of the Self-Referential Realm of Blogs [The New York Times, December 23, 2003]
· "She's shorter than I'd expected..." Gawking at Gawker [Mediabistro, July 17, 2003]
· "She's since moved on..." Best of New York 2003: Best Gossip [Village Voice, 2003]
· "As for those weapons of mass destruction, she insists she�s very, very close to finding them..." Blog, Blog, Blog [New York Magazine, November 10, 2003]
· "Hey! The New York Times is really fucking up these days. [Spiers] just wrote something for them..." Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Gawker's Elizabeth Spiers [The Black Table]
· "Ms. Spiers confesses that she occasionally has serious thoughts" A New York State of Blog [The New York Times, May 18, 2003]
· "A recently defected securities analyst" On the Verge [The Observer UK, March 23, 2003]