Elizabeth Spiers, right, who was the first editor of the New York media gossip site Gawker, is launching a new site called Dealbreaker on Wednesday.
She describes the new venture in an interview on I Want Media as “sort of an online business tabloid. It will be essentially the platform for what’s going to be an extended network of blogs. It’s the same kind of media model we used for Gawker — creating voicey online content and selling ads against it. It’s really a traditional media model.”
In a Q&A, she also responded to the question as to whether she will compete with New York Times’ business writer Andrew Ross Sorkin’s blog called DealBook, which discusses M&A activity on Wall Street. Here is the excerpt:
“Q: DealBook, a financial newsletter published by the New York Times, recently expanded into a blog. Is it similar to what you’ll be doing?
“Spiers: Not really. Andrew Sorkin, the editor, is insanely talented. But Dealbreaker is totally different. Sorkin’s DealBook is utility driven. You go there so you don’t have to read 40 different newspapers. It’s kind of an aggregator; it summarizes stories. Ninety percent of the stuff Dealbreaker’s going to do the New York Times would consider really frivolous.
“Q: Can you give an example?
“Spiers: [Microsoft co-founder] Paul Allen threw a party a few months ago on this enormous boat that you first have to get on another boat in order to get to it. It’s almost a Monty Python thing, where you have the 50-foot boat that carries you to the 150-foot boat. And he reportedly has an enormous, several-story guitar in the atrium of the boat. Three or four people told me about this.
“That’s not a New York Times business section story. But it’s definitely a Dealbreaker item. There’s a voyeuristic appeal and an entertainment value to it.”
Read the interview here.
