As it happens, Dead Horse Media founder Elizabeth Spiers' tremendous review of Portƒolio was her swan song, as she has left Dead Horse, effective yesterday.
Business Week Online: Elizabeth Spiers Leaves Dead Horse Media
Elizabeth Spiers is leaving Dead Horse Media, the blog network she co-founded last year. Dead Horse runs the niche sites DealBreaker, AboveTheLaw, and Fashionista.
“I want to do more sites, some of which are experimental (and not blog-related) and [Dead Horse’s investors] want to just focus on improving and expanding DealBreaker, Fashionista and AboveTheLaw,” wrote Spiers in response to an email inquiry. “ It's a reasonable position, but not one I agree with.” Spiers had essentially left the company entirely as of today.
Ms. Spiers provided entertainment, inspiration, and grist for the mills of bloggers everywhere, myself included. We at the Global HQ of Lee Distad's Professional Opinion wish her all the best in her future endeavors.
While she doesn't need me to stick up for her, I feel inclined to rebutt one anonymous comment from the Business Week site:
Jon, will you be addressing the fact that these sites have not been particularly successful by any measure?
Or is it "niche media" where every flop can be spun?
Posted by: querelous at April 19, 2007 05:34 PM
Truthfully the generation of large quantities of hate mail certainly constitute one very handy metric of success. As long as everybody either loves you or hates you, it means that they care.
Ms. Spier's infrequently updated personal blog can be found here.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Founder Bids Farewell To Dealbreaker
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Dealbreaker's Review of Portƒolio: Surly, Majestic, and Unspeakably Delightful
Sorry, the superlatives in the title above refers to the review penned by Dealbreaker Editor In Chief Elizabeth Spiers, and not Portƒolio, the new business magazine launched yesterday by dinosaur publisher Conde Nast.
Dealbreaker.com: Our Big, Fat Portfolio Review: Even Our Pessimism Was Optimistic
If the premiere issue is any indication, Conde Nast Portfolio** will be the Paris Hilton of business magazines: pretty but vapid, and unlikely to produce anything resembling an original thought.***
If you’re throwing darts at a newsstand, you’re probably as likely to hit something worse as something better. By all magazine standards, it's slightly above average.**** But it's painfully bad for a magazine that has poured $125 million and 18 months of work into development. (We're no strangers to painfully bad, you understand, but Dealbreaker costs less than a Deb Schoeneman contributing editor contract to produce and it's done entirely on the fly. What's their excuse?)
Never have I seen a review so packed with bon mots. It puts even the most savage of book reviews by Brit intelligentsia to shame. I thought about quoting some of the more select Dealbreakerisms, but there's too many. I would have to cut and paste the entire review and that much orange font on a black screen would be overwhelmingly Hallowe'eny.
If you are a lover of sarcasm, snark, and backhanded compliments, you owe it to yourself to read the entire thing. The snark train just keeps on rolling, and picking up speed, for all 2,925 words of it.
In summary, regular Dealbreaker commenter Zbignew put it best (as he is wont to do):
Best. Hatchet Job. Ever.
Ms. Spiers needs to post content more often.
Posted by: Zbignew April 17, 2007 05:11 PM
