Elizabeth Spiers

Today's New York Times reports that 81 percent of respondents in a Times/CBS News poll believe that "things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track" in the U.S.

According to The Times' David Leonhardt and Marjorie Connelly, "two in three people said they believed the economy was in recession today." Twenty-eight percent answered that they've been falling behind financially in the past couple of years.

But if you enjoy the occasional steak at Palm Too, you already knew the economy was in trouble.

In a Fortune magazine column penned by Dealbreaker founder Elizabeth Spiers this week, the writer cites a friend, "a former real estate investment banker who got out of investment banking comfortably before subprime mortgages hit the fan," who contends that the price of filet mignon at Palm Too is a serious indicator of inflation.  read more »

The past year has seen the launch of the Fox Business Network and Condé Nast’s Portfolio. Now it looks like there could be another brand-new business journalism start-up to add to the list.  read more »

Recently, a contretemps between former Gawker editors Jesse Oxfeld and Elizabeth Spiers got a bit out of control. So many former and guest editors! So hard to keep track of their various squabbles and quibbles! Well, until now.... The Gawker Media Buddy List (with apologies to Slate).

In this week's New York magazine, Jesse Oxfeld, that mag's newest hire and a former Gawker editor, expressed his thoughts about Gawker's most infamous feature, Gawker Stalker, in which the sightings of celebrities are reported:

"The shtick of being a New Yorker is that we don't care about celebrities," says Jesse Oxfeld, who was co-editor of Gawker at the time of the controversy but has since parted ways with the site (and subsequently joined New York). "And this entirely belied that. So it offended me a little bit. Because Gawker is supposed to embody a certain Ur-New Yorkerness, which means not being impressed by celebrities. Or, at least, being impressed but knowing enough not to seem impressed."

Elizabeth Spiers, who pioneered Gawker Stalker as the founding editor of Gawker, had this to say via IM today. "The point of Gawker stalker *was* not being impressed by the celebrities. The irony was subtle, but I'm fairly certain it was obvious. (That Jesse interpreted it that way may be indicative of why he wasn't a good fit for Gawker.)"

(Disclosure: Everyone everywhere, including this blogger, has worked with or after or before everyone else at all of the same places for the same millionaires.)

"That sounds bitchier than it is," Ms. Spiers noted; she went on to say that Mr. Oxfeld's sensibility works well in analytical pieces about the newspaper industry.  read more »

Former Gawker editor Jesse Oxfeld will soon head to New York magazine. He will be a senior editor for the magazine's website. Oxfeld confirmed that his start date is August 7.

"I'm hugely excited for it," said Oxfeld by phone today. "That's not spin or a line. It's a magazine that I've always wanted to work for."

"I've known a lot of folks at New York magazine for a long time," he said. "In fact, I was at July 4th fireworks at a New York staffer's place. That's where I met Ben Williams, who is running their web project."

Oxfeld follows, in a way, the path of Gawker's first editor, Elizabeth Spiers, who left that website to work at New York. But she has also followed him! Spiers later moved to Mediabistro.com, to fill a position identical to one formerly held by —wait for it— Oxfeld. Spiers has since moved on to found her own weblog company.

At Mediabistro, Jesse Oxfeld was the editor-in-chief of online media. He left that job for Editor & Publisher; in September, 2004, he told Gawker that "I hate change, so this is kind of sad, but it's a great opportunity."

Since his sudden and unexpected departure from Gawker Media a few weeks ago, Oxfeld has been working part time at Us Weekly; yesterday, he was working in the Wenner Media offices.

"I'm sad to give up my mid-afternoon naps," he said, of taking full-time office work, "but health and dental is a fair trade-off."

—Michael Calderone

Everything does move faster in blogland: Last Wednesday, Fishbowl NY editor Rachel Sklar posted an item marking the media blog's one-year anniversary. "[I]it's been a very good year," she wrote. "Thanks to all of you and here's to many more!"

That night, Sklar gave notice she would be leaving Jan. 31 to pursue a freelance career. "I'll be returning to the wild and wonderful world of freelancing and seeing daylight," Sklar wrote via e-mail. "Can't wait."  read more »

Sklar, an unusually sunny voice in the media-blog world, had been with Fishbowl NY 10 months. Founding editor Elizabeth Spiers left Nov. 1 of last year, to work on a novel.

As in today's Observer, NY Daily News gossips Rush and Molloy get in a little on Lauren Weisberger's new book, noting that "The Devil Wears Prada author gets even in her new book with witty Gawker founder Elizabeth Spiers, who trashed her on the blog. 'If anyone finds out exactly what Ms. Weisberger is an 'insider' in, do let us know,' she wrote," they say.

Of course, that Gawker item was written after Ms. Spiers was safely ensconced at New York magazine, but the point remains. (In fact, there's a new theme in chick lit of (totally fantasized) horrible abusive bloggers in the Big City; see also Deborah Schoeneman's forthcoming book.)  read more »

In any event, the name "Weisberger" appears 25 times on Gawker, and 13 of those appearances are during Ms. Spiers' tenure. Here are a few selected items of Ms. Spiers' horrible, cruel mauling of Ms. Weisberger:

July 7, 2003: "When the NYT had former Harper's Bazaar editor and [Vogue editor] Anna Wintour protegee Kate Betts review The Devil Wears Prada, (Lauren Weisberger's roman-a-clef about her job as Anna's assistant) I thought it was incredibly unfair..." April 24, 2003: "Shameless but relevant self-promotion: I interviewed Lauren Weisberger, the author of The Devil Wears Prada (a roman a clef about Vogue editor Anna Wintour) on Monday for Salon." April 14, 2003: "How naive do you have to be to sign up to work for [Vogue Editor] Anna Wintour, expecting that she's going to be nice to you? She's Anna Wintour, for god's sake! Of course she's going to abuse you! It's her job!" April 13, 2003: "As far as book reviews go, Betts' review isn't an actual review. There's no discussion of the novel as a piece of literature. It's really just an ethical analysis of Weisberger's decision to trash her ex-boss in print..." Yow! Harsh! Meow!

The Transom, in its former civilian life, once had the pleasure of accompanying a local magazine's f  read more »

So for a minute there, we kind of thought that blogging had made us famous. We were invited to sit on a mediabistro.com panel tonight with such NYC blogging celebrities as Gawker founder Elizabeth Spiers and Lockhart Steele, of Curbed fame, as well as people from Razor Magazine, and Engadget.com.

Audience members were actually expected to pay $29 to hear us ponder such weighty themes as "Is blogging journalism? Is journalism blogging?"

We suppose we should have expected this email from the mediabistro folks this morning:

"I'm sorry to drag you into this and now report that tonight's panel is going to be cancelled, but, alas, this is the state of affairs. Our enrollment numbers weren't high enough to run it."  read more »

Oh, right. We forgot. Who cares?