January 2012
4 posts
Hiring! Betabeat, social reporters, commercial...
I’ve gotten a lot of questions about hiring at the Observer and what I’m looking for, so here goes:
I have a few slots I need to fill immediately and some that can wait a few months till we do a national roll-out. But here are the immediate needs:
BETABEAT REPORTERS
I have a couple of slots available for Betabeat. I’m looking for scoop-driven reporters who are comfortable...
1 tag
Wherein the Times, Reuters and Slate discover The Big Adderall Shortage, seven months after Foster wrote about it. (Maybe no one had the attention span to notice till now?)
December 2011
22 posts
Randomly: a few of my favorite Observer pieces from this year, in no particular order:
A Twee Grows in Brooklyn: the Portlandification of the increasingly bourgeois borough by Adrianne Jeffries
Almost Amis by Christian Lorentzen
Peter Braunstein Still Has Issues by Aaron Gell
Pony Up, Haters: How 4Chan Gave Birth to the Bronies by Una LaMarche
The Situation and the Story: Press Corp Parties...
For FY 2011, the Observer Media Group will post a... →
Been dying to let that cat out of the bag for a while now.
In Bama for Christmas (which, more about that here) and Ma Spiers informs me that last week she killed a small rattlesnake in the house. She insists that this was a one-time thing, and assures me that there is no snake infestation generally. IN THE HOUSE.
Last year when I came home, the youngest baby Spiersbro (pictured here) had trapped a chipmunk. It was also declared a one-time thing; there...
This week’s issue of the Observer was the last of 2011 and I think it was a great one. There are several pieces I loved—Dana’s wrap-up, of course, with a fantastic cover illustration by the insanely talented Fred Harper—but also several other standouts:
- Kat Stoeffel’s “Meet Marie Calloway” on the bizarre Internet love triangle du jour (with the...
natashavc:
‘But as algorithms make consciousness a built environment, perception itself becomes in some way designed, in which sense 2011 wasn’t totally stuck in the past—it offered a new sensation-of-being: Drudge’s report on Trump’s quest for Obama’s birth certificate sends you clicking Facebook pictures of a lost love’s fat children as prelude to a brief viewing of the Muammar...
Dana Vachon wraps up the year for the Observer with the BEST LEDE EVER:
“You will surely make noise when I take you deep,” texted Representative Anthony Wiener, the great BlackBerry lover, to his virtual inamorata, Lisa Weiss, the famous dissident, aviatrix and Vegas blackjack dealer.
“Yes I will,” she texted back. “I will be sore for days.”
This past year took the world deep, and the world...
I can recall a lunch in 1991, when I was editing... →
Note to staff: don’t get any ideas.
I think I’m duty-bound to call a final session of the Christopher Hitchens Drinking Club (CHDC). Details TK.
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He said he’d been following my work and expressed... →
Aaron Gell’s epic Peter Braunstein story is now online:
The massive Clinton Correctional Facility is located in Dannemora, N.Y., in a breathtaking corner of the state not far from Burlington, Vt. Peter resides in what is called APPU, or the Assessment and Program Preparation Unit, and his neighbors include homicidal maniacs, child molesters, and rapists.
It’s about as far as you can...
felixsalmon:
spiers:
theawl:
felixsalmon:
spiers:
felixsalmon:
Elizabeth, if you want me to take you to lunch somewhere nice, you’re first going to have to win a bet. Which, I’m still waiting for you to propose something.
Are you betting against the new luxury mag? Cuz I’ll take that one. I say it’s still around in a year—and it’s profitable. Your move.
I’ll take that bet. Tell me...
theawl:
felixsalmon:
spiers:
felixsalmon:
Elizabeth, if you want me to take you to lunch somewhere nice, you’re first going to have to win a bet. Which, I’m still waiting for you to propose something.
Are you betting against the new luxury mag? Cuz I’ll take that one. I say it’s still around in a year—and it’s profitable. Your move.
I’ll take that bet. Tell me how you’re defining...
Hiring: Commercial Observer - reporter and intern...
While we’re on the subject of blue-moon-like print products that actually make money: we’re hiring for Commercial Observer, the NYO’s weekly real estate trade pub.
INTERNSHIP: The Commercial Observer, a weekly newspaper focused on New York City’s commercial real estate industry, is seeking an intern with working knowledge of the real estate industry for a position beginning in...
felixsalmon:
spiers:
Spiersblr: The Riches; They Buy Things!
harryh:
spiers:
(Or at the very least, bet against it with me on the other side of the wager so I can make some money off the deal. Any takers? Rex? Felix?)
No way I’m taking the other side of a bet against spiers, but I hope that someone does so I can watch!
Well, Felix Salmon bet John Carney that I wouldn’t last a year as...
Unrelated: there is a Basil Hayden’s ad on theAwl.
I assume this means they’re getting paid in bourbon and this was Balk’s idea.
Spiersblr: The Riches; They Buy Things! →
harryh:
spiers:
(Or at the very least, bet against it with me on the other side of the wager so I can make some money off the deal. Any takers? Rex? Felix?)
No way I’m taking the other side of a bet against spiers, but I hope that someone does so I can watch!
Well, Felix Salmon bet John Carney that I wouldn’t last a year as NYO editor the week I got the job. The wager was...
The Riches; They Buy Things!
The sort of amazing thing about the comments on this Gawker post about the new luxury mag we’re doing is there seem to be a lot of people who think you can’t make money off of rich people. Every print launch we’ve done this year has been profitable, and some extremely so. I get the EWWW RICH PEOPLE THING sentiment, but the suggestion that it doesn’t or won’t work...
November 2011
13 posts
rickwebb:
“This is tech. We’re new, we’re disruptive. Many of us like Occupy Wall Street. We like their distributed approach. We like their use of technology. But even those of us who don’t, we’re not part of crony capitalism. Until we IPO for a billion bucks, we’re not into being on the inside. We don’t have lobbyists and we’re not looking for unfair advantages. Mr. Bloomberg, just because we’re...
1 tag
At 2.43am, the New York Observer reported that... →
1 tag
This is one of the many reasons why I love having... →
Many New Yorkers complain about the murkiness of... →
1 tag
Looking for freelance party reporters
I’m looking to expand social coverage a bit at the Observer, and want to start by trying out new freelance writers.
I don’t care if you have experience doing party coverage, but I need the reports to be smart and funny. (And if you’re a funny writer generally, I may have some other assignments as well.)
So if you’re interested, send me a resume and a write-up of an event...
That Katie Roiphe fight piece sort of reminds me of that one time Adam Gopnik dared to take public transportation.
Sloane wrote a thing for a magazine about the fact that we’re BFFs despite the fact that I’m essentially a robot:
By all rights, we should not be friends. She is all head, I am all heart. Her creativity moves in a linear fashion; mine is a splatter painting. She runs businesses, speaks Arabic, starts websites, calculates tips. All those activities are foreign to me. Aside from ...
October 2011
14 posts
Occupy Wall Street and the Poetry of Now-Time →
aarongell:
I met these guys the other night drank the Kool-Aid on Occupy Wall Street.
Watch NYC startups pitch Ben Lerer on BetaBeat's... →
The Hottest People at Occupy Wall Street →
youngmanhattanite:
spiers:
We couldn’t resist.
Well, you could have. For a take on all sides, pretty and ugly and all points between, check out Sady Doyle’s piece. Good quotes in there.
But we wouldn’t. Covering the issues doesn’t preclude illuminating the absurdities. If you just want the former, yes, you can just read Sady Doyle. No one’s going to make you click.
The Hottest People at Occupy Wall Street →
We couldn’t resist.
