New York could have been mistaken for London that misty Thursday evening, as the clouds seemed to lounge on the tops of skyscrapers. Although an October chill swept through the air, amplified by the sea breeze coming off the Hudson River, the view from the top deck was worth any and all shivering, especially when the captain took the ship for an up and personal view of Lady Liberty.

Someone joked that Casale is known for picking the worst times for events, but as fall tends to be my favorite season, I found everything about the atmosphere to be lovely. Besides, I was staying warm with a complimentary mariner’s cap emblazoned with the Casale logo.

If attendees — including representatives from major publishers like Gawker, Martha Stewart and MLB.com as well as tech partner MediaMath — couldn’t take the cold, well there was plenty to do inside: a dance-off erupted at a Microsoft Kinect (I saw some very interesting moves being thrown around to Salt ‘N Pepa’s “Push It) while old-fashioned folks hit up the physical dance floor when the DJ sank into a Michael Jackson retrospective. A colorful magician showed off his card skills, and may have even given away some secrets.

Below deck, patrons enjoyed an array of specialty pastas and tender sliced roast and/or turkey while enjoying the sea-level view. And, especially after one-too-many glasses of the superb champagne (what else would you drink on a yacht), I found myself returning to the frites station and its addictive mayonaise dipping sauce

CEO and President Joe Casale was all smiles as he greeted boarding passengers before the cruise set off and then served as host for the voyage. Along with his son and Vice President of Strategy Andrew Casale and a posse of Casale staff, he’d taken a flight down from the network’s headquarters in Toronto earlier that day, but showed no evidence of being tired. A few associates mentioned that day trips to NYC to visit publishers, agencies and tech companies were standard practice.

On one of his rounds, Joe took a few minutes to discuss the recently introduced CasaleX RTB platform, which he said had been met with wide approval by the network’s 3,000 premium publishers. Setting it apart from other ad networks that have introduced RTB, the platform was built in-house off of existing tech.

“Actually, we already had the real-time element,” he said with a grin.

More than three quarters of Casale’s base are using the platform, but Joe was marveling about the future potential RTB, claiming that it’s only in its initial stages. On that note, we chatted about whether programmatic buying was merely the buzz word du jour or the next wave of technological evolution.

Alas, the point of the cruise was to show Casale knows how to have a good time. Shop talk about private exchanges, data-imbued social targeting, the Federal Trade Commission’s three-pronged online privacy framework and rumors about massive rounds of funding gave way to more fun conversations. In particular, the New Yorkers were pumped to talk about the upcoming CMJ Music Festival — yes, my band Libel is playing, but instead of promoting, I was more interested in finding out where the new buzz bands were playing.

As we docked and then exited the vessel, the wife (who accompanied and served as Adotas photographer) was simply astounded. She commented, “This is really the appropriate way to treat your clients.” Indeed, I thought, indeed.

For several days last week, most visitors to Gawker Media sites were treated to their usual spicy content, but a number were also greeted with an unexpected installation of malware. The Suzuki ads certainly looked legitimate and were provided by Sparks SMG, a division of Publicis Groupe, but in actuality the buyers were impostors using similar email addresses. The scammers had enough knowledge of Sparks clients and the advertising world to fool Gawker employees.

But displaying almost frightening complexity, the ads only infected visitors in intervals. It took days for Gawker to realize something was awry.

It’s a traditional con game with a technological twist — something that should keep all sides of the online ad community on their toes.

Yahoo to focus on display advertising, content and mobile services technology
CEO Carol Bartz said she sold the search business because Yahoo could not match the investment Google and Microsoft. While reducing the amount of money used for marketing and search technology, Bartz plans to invest in display ad, content and mobile services technology. Investors though fear that it may have traded one of the most profitable businesses for a deflating, media business that already peaked. In addition, Yahoo will lose talented engineers to Microsoft and layoff as many as 400 employees because of the deal.

Washington Post cries about Gawker ‘rip off’
Ian Shapira wrote a story about a “business coach,” who charges her early-Gen-X/Boomer clients hundreds of dollars to explain how mostly people in their 20s and late teens behave in the workplace. Gawker picked it up, excerpting chunks of the story. Shapira wonders about the death of journalism, but really it boils down to what is worth more to a newspaper, pageviews or the value of having content distributed throughout the web.

State, local online election ads facing restrictions
A Floridia election case could restrict using online ads for local political campaigns, especially search. Federal election law requires candidates to disclose in their ads who is paying for them, and whether the candidate approved of the ad. Most states have similar laws. While federal law has exemptions, depending on if it’s impractical, Florida has rare exceptions that don’t include online ads.

The newspaper seems to think what works for traditional journalism is the same way it should for blogs, it doesn’t, and time after time foists another silly blog-centric story on readers. This past weekend it was how blogs are rumor-sponsoring coffee klatches that are so tired most of them fail. (Even more than restaurants, it exclaimed.)

Certainly, editing, fact checking take a high priority at the Times. But Jeff Jarvis wrote that all journalism is in beta. Online enables reporters to turn that to advantage with transparency, collaboration and news as process. (He even points to a couple of blog posts that appear to be also fueled by rumors.)

I think they are both right and wrong. Traditional newspapers do have a higher standard, not that they always reach it, and blogs are evolving the way journalism can be written. Bloggers sometimes put out news that are not totally verified, allowing for crowdsourcing factcheckers. These two approaches are not mutually exclusive, but the Times condescending angle makes it look like the elitist out-of-touch empire that it sometimes is.

Howard Kurtz at least comes at the evolving blogger role with a light touch writing about the official launch of True/Slant:

“With newspapers and magazines laying off and shutting down, journalists are increasingly turning to the Web to promote themselves and their niche. Rather than toil for a single corporation, some are doing a little of everything: blogging, book-writing, TV-guesting and Twittering. That means sites such as True/Slant will spread like viruses, mutating into different forms.”

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Take Gawker. Prompted by what appeared to be a straight forward press release, Alley insider reported that the media company acqured a blog called BloodCopy.com. Later it was discovered that the news was fake and part of a “viral” campaign by HBO for a show. Gawker was leveraging its brand for use in an advertisiment.

Now it’s true that readers don’t really go to Gawker for the news value; they want to feel superior to others, regardless if the information is true, a rumor or just good enough of a lie to be worth posting. People go to the Times to get the truth. (I hear critics spitting up their coffee, but it’s true.) So how far does the Times go to leverage its brand without crossing the line?

According to Forbes, an Intel spot, which was designed in part by the Times’ ad sales team, used the newspaper’s own brand in the actual marketing message. A Times front page rolled over readers’ screens, revealing a date from the year 2040 and a headline, “President converses with dolphin, develops new environmental plan.” Readers who clicked on the strange article were sent to the homepage of Intel.

News media brands need to be held to a different standard than other brands. The Times brand stands for more than just some product being sold over the counter. It stands for a trusted news site. Links into content, takeover ads, videos, interactive advertisement, etc should all be far game in an industry that is grasphing for ad dollars. But the wall between Gawker leveraging its brand and the Times experiment is not as thick as it once was.

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His Gawker Media, which includes Gawker, Gizmodo and Jalopnik, drew in nearly 300 million pageviews, some 34 percent over last February’s level, according to a memo at Romensko, and for the year to March, it could be fifth up over last winter. Denton said an improved comment section and the big ad units that take over the sites were some of the reasons for its success.

Small publishers such as Gawker Media are doing well, it seems, because they target niche markets and keep costs low. Start-up websites such as SB Nation, Seeking Alpha Ltd. and HealthCentral Network Inc., which create and aggregate content about topics like sports, business and health, are recording sharp gains in visitors and revenue, according to the WSJ. Some are also landing distribution partnerships with big media brands eager for cheap content during the recession.

The number of visitors to sports Web site SB Nation, for instance, rose 15 percent from December to a total of 3.4 million in January, according to the company, even as unique visitors to the category of sports sites tracked by comScore Inc. fell 2 percent. SB Nation launched a partnership with Yahoo Inc.’s Yahoo Sports last week and has signed another deal with Gannett Co.’s USA Today.

“Consumer engagement is shifting toward niche-content experiences,” Andrew Braccia, a partner at venture-capital firm Accel Partners, told the WSJ. Braccia, who sits on the board of SB Nation, added that “Three to five years from now, people will no longer be drawing a distinction between traditional forms of publishing and what we know as blogs today.”

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UPDATE: Here’s the Times story. 

And if a media job in the Big Apple doesn’t scratch your itch, you can also adjust your search to look for other jobs elsewhere. But in true Gawker fashion, their simple retort is “why would you?”