laurel-touby

Laurel Touby's $30,000 Sofa Is No Big Deal to Rich, Rich Laurel Touby

Hamilton Nolan · 11/15/12 10:05AM

Longtime Gawker readers may recall a bygone era in which Laurel Touby, founder of media job board-etc. site Mediabistro, was a regular Gawker "character," famous for her feather boas and inability to use email properly. After she sold Mediabistro for $23 million in 2007, she became more famous for being a Can You Believe The Lady Who Started Mediabistro Is Now Super Rich, What The Fuck Is This World Coming To? Well. Years have passed. Now you must hear all about Laurel Touby's multimillion-dollar apartment.

Coldplay Bassist Buys East Village Pad

cityfile · 07/24/09 07:33AM

• Coldplay bassist Guy Berryman has paid $2.65 million for a 2,681-square-foot apartment on the second floor of 79 East 2nd Street. The best part: He'll be a ten minute walk from bandmate Jonny Buckland, who picked up an Astor Place condo last November. [Cityfile]
• Artist Richard Prince has paid $11.5 million for a townhouse located at 57 East 78th Street. The six-bedroom manse had been listed for $15 million earlier this year. [NYO]
• Mediabistro founder Laurel Touby has paid $3.905 million for a 4,100-square-foot penthouse at 43 East 19th Street. [NYO]

The Twitterati Give Their Divorce Lawyer a Porn Name

Owen Thomas · 05/11/09 05:33PM

The problem with Twitterati isn't so much oversharing as undercaring. Laurel Touby's apartment woes, Lockhart Steele's porn name, and Penelope Trunk's divorce bill are as good as the media elite's tweets get!

Sad Web 2.0 Losers Ready for Web 3.0 (As Soon As They Figure Out What It Is)

Owen Thomas · 04/13/09 03:40PM

Failed Internet mogul Alan Meckler is really excited about the Semantic Web, aka Web 3.0! And who can blame him, since he pretty much failed at versions 1.0 and 2.0? Meckler, who has run a passel of third-rate Internet websites since the early '90s, when he was best-known for trade titles like CD-ROM Librarian, now calls his company WebMediaBrands. Laurel Touby's Mediabistro.com is part of his collection. The boa-bedecked editrix reports breathlessly on Twitter that her boss has called the Semantic Web "the next stage of the Internet."

Happy Birthday

cityfile · 03/13/09 06:47AM

Jamie Dimon (left) is the CEO of JPMorgan. Byrdie Bell (right) goes to a lot of parties. What do the two have in common? Absolutely nothing, except they're both celebrating birthdays today: Dimon is 53; Bell is turning 24. William H. Macy turns 59 today. Kathy Hilton, the woman who brought Paris Hilton into this world, is 50. Emile Hirsch is 24. Mets pitcher Johan Santana is turning 30. Political commentator Charles Krauthammer is 59. Mediabistro founder Laurel Touby is turning 46. Common is 37. Danny Masterson is 33. Dana Delany is 53. And Neil Sedaka is turning 70. Weekend birthdays after the jump!

Laurel Touby: The College Years

Richard Lawson · 03/04/09 02:25PM

As we learned that her assistant was laid off today, our attentions were drawn to be-boa-ed Mediabistro founder Laurel Touby. Coincidentally, a tipster directed us to some nostalgic photos from her young, frivolous college years.

Private Jets: PR Poison

Hamilton Nolan · 02/02/09 10:40AM

It used to be that private planes inspired hatred simply because their occupants were probably over-wealthy environmental hypocrites. But thanks to the recession, private jets are an even more radioactive populist issue. Fly and die!

The Media Twitterati

Hamilton Nolan · 12/08/08 12:02PM

We gratuitously mocked Times columnist Nick Kristof's Twitter feed last week. But the truth is that he's in good company. Lots of big-shot media people—including many Gawker "favorites"!—have Twitters, despite the fact that Twitter is proven to destroy journalism. We haven't been paying enough attention to their various tweets about this and that. After the jump, we condense the offering of five famous media twits into bite-sized packages:

Mediabistro Thinks Pretty People Can Still Get Media Jobs

Sheila · 11/14/08 01:11PM

You all know the tale: MediaBistro started as a series of cocktail networking parties hosted by Laurel Touby, who then realized she could monetize a website by charging (voluntarily, at first) for job postings. Then came the classes, which are totally overpriced—especially when compared with nearly identical, yet much longer, journalism classes at the New School. (I've taken both!) Then came the seminars—would you pay $75 to watch dubious dating columnist Julia Allison and others talk about personal branding? MediaBistro makes money by getting people to pay them to learn how to break into journalism. But let's be honest: they're basically an expensive Learning Annex for people who want to work in the media but have no contacts or connections. So what's MediaBistro gonna do to make money turning the downturn, with MediaJobs disappearing left and right? How about desperate stunts: charging for cheesecake videos that cross the line:This video, "How Do I Got from Model to Model Journalist?" costs $15 FOR A SIXTEEN-MINUTES. Laurel, that's the phone-sex model of making money, not the "freelancer-helping" one.

Laurel Touby Needs Help

Hamilton Nolan · 09/17/08 02:59PM

Laurel Touby, the millionaire founder of Mediabistro—which totally exists to give freelancers the false hope of getting media jobs—has been called upon to give a speech about "Best Practices in Freelancing." Except she's forgotten everything about freelancing, because she's a millionaire now! So she needs you freelancers to help: