NonSociety Adds “Domestic Bliss” Contributor Jordan Reid

by Rachel Sklar | 9:50 am, September 15th, 2009

» 9 comments

Jordan - sunflower(2) NonSociety is once again a trio – replacing departed original third partner Mary Rambin with newcomer Jordan Reid. Reid joins original NonSociety founders Julia Allison (the “dating columnist“) and Meghan Asha (the “Geekette“) as their new “Domestic Bliss” contributor and will lifestream accordingly at jordan.nonsociety.com.

Rambin bowed out of the personality-driven lifestyle startup earlier this year (consensus from all parties: amicably) to move to L.A. and start her own site, More than Mary, but remains a co-host with Allison and Asha for their web series TMI Weekly.

So: Who is Jordan Reid, and why should you care about her? NonSociety readers are familiar with Reid, who cropped up on Allison’s blog in May when they met at a party, and has remained as a fixture since. Readers know that Reid, 27, is a Harvard-educated former actress who was recently married, has tattoos, also has a shih-tzu puppy and can cook chicken; Google knows that her full name is Jordan Reid Berkow (she has gone by variations thereof), has appeared on Law & Order and was part of the original gang who created It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and played Sweet Dee in the original, shot-for-$500 version of the pilot. (Also, Craigslist knows that she was looking for an intern, which means Reblogging Nonsociety knew she was the new contributor before all of us.)

All of this will come into Reid’s lifecast, which is billed as “Domestic Bliss Done Differently” but which will be personality-driven like the rest of NonSociety. The official press release is light on details of Reid’s qualifications, because they are not, themselves official. Her quote:

“Am I a chef? No. An interior designer? Hardly. I consider myself a somewhat talented amateur in these arenas, and for me this lifecast is an exciting journey and an on-going learning process. I’m hoping my readers will benefit from seeing someone just like them who is unafraid to try…well, just about anything.”

This will probably get the NonSociety haters out in droves – surprise, surprise, another girl who looks pretty in pictures and thinks she’s an “expert” – but a quick survey of her beta-content shows that she won’t be so easily dismissed. She’s an easy writer, with unpretentious tastes, practical advice, recipes and good suggestions, and cheerful about DIY projects. (Disclaimer: I know nothing about cooking, but she does seem to know what she’s doing.)

She’s also incorporating an interesting new area into the home-decor-cooking-lifestyle arena: Marriage. Reid’s blog, which goes back a full month, is filled with her husband, indie musician Kendrick Strauch, and part of her ‘expertise’ will focus on “advice for couples in committed relationships.” (This is an area of expertise that has, shall we say, not been showcased on NonSociety thus far!).

This is how Allison pitches it in the press release: “Jordan is what would happen if a Harvard-educated, twenty-something Martha-Stewart-in-training married a rocker, rode a motorcycle, and refused to wear any skirt that hit below mid-thigh.” And there you have it: The package, ready-made, to fill a gaping hole that exists in the demo below Martha, Rachael Ray, Nigella and Julie & Julia, morning-show and red-carpet ready. And in the meantime, it will be hard to argue that she’s not walking the walk with her content. In fact, it may soon be hard to dismiss NonSociety at all; Reid could be the servicey, down-to-earth ingredient that the site has been missing — while still, of course, posting many pictures of herself looking fabulous.

Speaking of Reblogging Nonsociety, it actually just rightly noted that I am a friend of Allison, the site’s founder; however, I met Reid for the first time two days ago to hear about the project. She spoke in detail about home renovation, her former job as the administrator for a law firm, and wore fishnets. Allison beamed at her newest hire, uncharacteristically letting her do most of the talking, and suggested a good reason to be optimistic about her success: “All the mistakes that I made, we’re not gonna make with her. “

Related:
Introductory Post: Jordan Reid [NonSociety]
The Day I Quit [NonSociety]
Lucy, The One-Eyed Shih-Tzu [NonSociety]
It’s Official: Jordan Berkhow Is The New NonSociety Contributor [Reblogging NonSociety]

Reid’s Law & Order clip:

Jordan Berkow, Jordan Reid, Jordan Reid Berkow, Julia Allison, Kendrick Strauch, Martha Stewart, Mary Rambin, Meghan Asha, Nigella Lawson, NonSociety, Rachael Ray, Reblogging NonSociety

http://www.facebook.com/people/Anthony-De-Rosa/503357744 Anthony De Rosa

This banal blog barely gets 12,000 visitors a month.

http://www.quantcast.com/nonsociety.com

Never has so much been written (almost exclusively on Gawker) about something that has almost zero relevance.
Rachel Sklar

And yet! It is, and Julia and Meghan are regularly jetting to hi-octane tech conferences to opine on panels with bigwigs. NonSociety has not figured out its groove, but I actually think this hire will change that. Check out a few posts Soup, I bet you’ll see what I mean.
Statler and Waldorf

There are 31 links in this post. That is more links than have been on nonsociety in a month…
The new blog, I mean lifecast, certainly seems to have more content than the founders have provided. One question though, the whole “amicably” part was that from some intrepid reporting or just the press release?
http://www.facebook.com/people/Anthony-De-Rosa/503357744 Anthony De Rosa

I’m not sure why I should be impressed with these two taking a flight to go sit on a technology panel. If I had a dime for every blogger asked to sit on a panel I would be able to single-handedly pay for health care reform.

The best part is, even if they think that is something worth crowing about, they don’t even bother to do anything with the experience at these “hi-octane” tech conferences other than post kissy face pictures with people who are far more qualified to discuss such topic rolling their eyes at them.
stephan27

This (non society) is not even a legitimate journalism web site that you are writing about. The only reason that it is being covered by Mediaite is because Rachel Sklar is best friends with Julia Allison. Miss Sklar should disclose this conflict of interest in her piece.

It lowers the standards of Mediaite to have the editor covering one of her best friend’s web sites and writing about it as news. If Dan Abrams were aware of the conflict, I would be surprised that he would allow Sklar to write about Allison–at least without disclosing their close friendship.

Non-Society is such a non-entity web site that there is no way it would ever make it into Mediaite without this favor that Sklar is doing for her buddy. And the fact that this article is featured at the top of the Mediaite website–really? Rachel sklar should come clean about her best friendship with Julia Allison, and should stop writing about her friends in what is supposed to be a legitimate media site.
winston_wolfe

Seriously? I mean c’mon Mediaite, there are better things to be covering in the ACTUAL media than this non-story. I also think the story should have been written, if at all that is, by someone other than Rachel. Let’s look at it this way, if you were not in fact friends with Julia, would this have passed as an actual noteworthy media event? Much less one that warrants more than two or three sentences?

Blog posts about goings on in your friends professional lives should be saved for Tumblr, not a site that is trying to accomplish what Mediaite seems to be. I’ll remain a reader, for now, but the credibility of the site, as well as the author, as someone/some place that will be taking a non-biased look at the goings on of New Media, has taken a hit.

Bottom line, and I honestly don’t mean to be an asshole about this, BUT, this “story” reads as an old Cindy Adams or Liz Smith style of column would have. “Old media” style circle jerks are–I’m fairly certain about this–not where you want this site to be headed and by that I mean becoming a site that is irrelevant in the New Media landscape. ya know, kinda like non-society is.
stephan27

I totally agree with the above comment by winston_wolf. Bottom line: this is a non-story, that has absolutely zero impact in the media world. And this never ever would have been covered had Sklar not done a huge favor for her buddy Julia Allison. Sklar’s allegiance should start to be more to her readers than to her social buddies, and Sklar should stop abusing her platform to put her friends on mediaite.
notafan

It’s hard to see why this story is covered here or why a friend of the piece’s subject is the one who’s written it.

Scanning current headlines on this site it seems every headline is about either a nationally known figure or nationally known media outlet, if not both. The only exception seems to be this piece. Odd that the only out of place story, the only one that doesn’t fit the profile of the other pieces currently headlined on this site, is this one story about the writer’s friend’s business.

And even if Mediaite does regularly covers more than just national stories and figures, and even if the business covered in this piece does align with Mediaite’s usual subjects covered, this particular story about this business just doesn’t seem worthy of coverage here (from what I saw as of this writing the only others to cover it have been a few sites with a focus on NYC media gossip).

The fact that a mostly unknown, little-visited blog added an even lesser known employee to its roster (or broadened its view from coverage of the single life to include the married life) is hardly significant in my opinion.

And even if Mediaite does consider this legitimate material for coverage for some reason, why not have one of any number of other writers here write the piece other than the ONE person who’s longtime friends with the founder of the business featured?

I realize you may not be obligated to avoid a conflict of interest or its perception, but if Mediaite values its readers and wants its content to be taken seriously I think it would do well to do avoid both real and easily perceived conflicts of interest anyway. And especially when it can be easily avoided by simply assigning a different writer.

Maybe if the writer wasn’t a good friend of the owner of the business she featured, I wouldn’t find the many, many links back to the friend’s site so over thet top eiither. Then again I probably would. After all this is definitely the first time I’ve seen a story of any length, much less a one-page piece, send 23 links* to ONE site!

( *23 links to nonsociety’ in this story, if I counted correctly.)
jennifer25

Wow, this is really embarrassing. I had a much higher opinion of Ms. Sklar’s journalistic ethics until I stumbled upon this favor to a friend. Whoa. Nonsociety is a nothing website/vanity project. Is this a joke?