May 2013
2 posts
On Conflating Your Job with Your Identity
Here’s a thing I wrote for Medium on the dreaded question “What do you do?”:
Among the niceties and travails of meeting people for the first time, there’s no more loaded question than “What do you do?” I would almost prefer to respond to “What is your favorite sexual position?” or “How do you feel about your mother?” because people would be less likely to read into my...
April 2013
4 posts
SpiersList Time
I’m sending out my once-a-month-or-less newsletter at the end of the week, so if you have job listings you’d like included, please email me at espiers AT gmail, subject line SpiersList by EOD Wednesday. You can subscribe here.
Question, re: social analytics...
I’m looking for a social media analytics tool that will tell me how many referrals are coming into a site from a specific Twitter account. Everything I’ve looked at so far just has top line numbers and individual instances of mentions (with no indication of how many referrals that specific mention generates.) Does anyone know of an off-the-shelf product or service that does this? If...
March 2013
8 posts
ACTUAL JOB DESCRIPTION (not the one you will find...
paulbogaards:
The Executive Vice President, Director of Publicity and Media Relations for the Knopf Doubleday Group (@paulbogaards) is seeking a Publicity Assistant to provide day-to-day support in a fast-paced, internal/external facing, detail and data driven environment working with authors, agents, booksellers, legacy media professionals, and other half-crazed publishing desperados.
This...
I’m still on the Groupon beat for Fast Company (and will be till this feature comes out) so I went back to Groupon HQ in Chicago on Monday to talk to the new CEO Eric Lefkofsky. Here’s how it went:
As he and I chat, Lefkofsky struggles to find the right metaphor to describe the four-year old company’s struggles in the last 18 months since going public. “You have a company that’s...
On Keeping a Notebook in the Digital Age →
Here’s something I wrote for Medium.
Marissa Mayer, Sheryl Sandberg and Double...
I wrote an op-ed for The Verge on Sheryl Sandberg, Marissa Mayer and double standards for women at the top:
Just look at Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. Her recent book, Lean In, has provoked hostile criticism by many people who haven’t read the book, but find it offensive because the advice it offers doesn’t work for all women everywhere — and worse, think that Sandberg herself must represent...
SpiersList, March edition
I’m sending out the March edition of my personal newsletter on Wednesday. Per earlier editions, if you have job postings, send them to me at Espiers AT gmail and I’ll include them. And you can subscribe here.
theadderallchronicles asked: Re: James Bond, did you know he was named after the author of a book about birds of the West Indies that Ian Fleming happened to have laying around his house there?
Bunny. James Bunny.
As an obsessive Bond fan, I found this post that combined 007 references with cute bunnies emotionally confusing. And I arrived at it via a Lifehacker post linking to a Japanese study suggesting that looking at photos of cute things during the day boosts focus and productivity.
There’s a meme in here somewhere; I just can’t quite parse it.
Andrew Mason's Last Interview as Groupon CEO
I was working on a feature for Fast Company on Groupon and was minutes away from filing it yesterday when Andrew Mason got fired.
Mason and I had breakfast four weeks ago in Palo Alto and here’s what happened:
“Mason never could convince Wall Street … and he seemed disillusioned with what his experience dealing with it. “What’s just depressing to me is how—and it’s not...
February 2013
3 posts
Why Developing Relationships in Your 20s Matters
So I’m doing this column on Medium that’s sort of about personal development but I’ve been thinking of it more in the vein of Letters to a Young Technologist because I think much of Medium’s audience works in the tech/startup world. The post I wrote this week came out of listening to 20somethings I know justify a lifestyle that consists entirely of work and casual sex on...
I’m doing a weekly column on Medium about personal development. Here’s the first one: The Art of George W. Bush and the Importance of Play
January 2013
2 posts
SpiersList, Vol. 2: send me your job postings
Per my posting last month, I’m sending out my monthly newsletter and if anyone’s hiring and wants to post a job listing, send it to me and I’ll include it. Email me at espiers AT gmail.
December 2012
7 posts
SpiersList, December 2012 →
(Ignore the January 2012 hed. Wrong template!)
Hiring: Editor-in-chief, and contributing editors...
I’m not doing the hiring for this one, but one of my former colleagues is advising a new travel startup whose editorial team will be based in New York. They’re looking to hire an EIC and some contributing editors. The job descriptions and contact info are below:
Hopper, an innovative travel start up, is building a world class content editorial team. We are looking for savvy, ambitious...
dpstyles:
“Not just anyone can build the next Facebook or Foursquare, but you can bake the Zuckerberg family’s eggnog cinnamon chip scones, or cook the Foursquare founder’s mother’s sausage soup.”
—
Ha. From the NYT writeup on “The Startup Chef” — a cookbook of startup kids’ recipes Maya & Hunter put together. All proceeds go to help #Sandy victims. Buy one!...
Send me your job postings
I’m sending out the first edition of resurrected SpiersList on Monday and I have a few spots I’m hiring for that’ll be included and a couple of job notices from friends who are hiring.
As long as it doesn’t get too unwieldy, I’m happy to include job postings from third parties as long as they’re for digital media or journalism positions. So if you’re...
SpiersList resurrected!
A few years ago, when I was consulting (pre-Observer) I had a semi-regular mailing list with updates on new projects, positions I was looking to fill for clients, and links to recent things I’d written. It went out once a month or so.
So I’m reviving it. I’ll probably put most of the job listings on Tumblr as well, but if you want to make sure you don’t miss them,...
November 2012
10 posts
Eileen Myles on Philip Roth retiring:
“Thank God. I’m happy he’s still alive and we won’t have to keep hearing about his boring books. It’s very generous of him to stop.”
From Flavorwire’s 100 Most Important Living New York Writers
rickwebb's tumblrmajig: 2012 Thankful Edition →
rickwebb:
My parents
My sister Val
Emma Welles
My grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins
My health and wealth
New York City
Boston
Alaska
My friends. All of them.
Mrs Fannybottons
Jill Simonsen
Valerie Mulford
Tumblr
Secret Clubhouse
The barbarian group
Foursquare
The Wizarding World…
I am upset that beef jerky made this list and i didn’t.
I was testing out Obvious Corp’s new publishing platform Medium this morning and wrote a quick riff on pursuing multiple interests. Medium’s still a closed platform at the moment, so thought I’d post it here, too:
On Dilettantism and the Virtues of Pursuing Multiple Interests
October 2012
3 posts
1 tag
September 2012
1 post
August 2012
9 posts
1 tag
Today’s my last Observer close. (Next week is a “dark week”, meaning we don’t publish.) One of the highlights of tomorrow’s issue is already up: Dan D’Addario’s review of Katie Roiphe’s new book:
“I am aware that there are an unusual number of people who ‘hate’ my writing, and that I have done something to attract, if not court, that hatred,” Ms....
2 tags
Also: more info about the new venture, leaving the NYO, etc TK later or tomorrow. Didn’t really plan to announce today, but media reporters! (Doing their jobs!)
peterfeld:
nickrizzo:
Observer Media Group president Christopher Barnes is also leaving, also to start a (presumably separate) company. 18 months ago, Dylan Byers reported that ”Within the paper itself, however, Barnes is, practically speaking, the anti-Christ.”
Dylan Byers has the gall today to link back to his corrupt and clueless 2011 hit job on Barnes, just as much of a Michael...
And! The Observer's Michael H. Miller goes to an... →
2 tags
This week Dan D’Addario interviews Chelsea Krost, self-proclaimed expert on millennials (and millennial):
When asked by Today guest co-host Andy Cohen, in 2011, how someone with a nascent media career could possibly address the panoply of real concerns teens face, Ms. Krost replied, “I don’t say I’m an expert. I say I’m a teenager who can just really relate to all the other teens out...
July 2012
5 posts
1 tag
Not to diminish anyone’s feel-good-y Olympic experience (okay, to diminish it a bit): just a reminder that the spectacle you’re watching is driven at the top by greed and corruption:
Chris Lehmann writes:
The sitting head of the International Olympics Committee, Jacques Rogge, is a Belgian count and a retired competitive yachtsman—and that’s what passes for a crusading reformer in...
