For obsessive Gawker watchers and redesign doom-mongers: the 35.6m uniques in Jan 2012 is record and 55% up from last April’s nadir.

– Nick Denton, via Twitter, almost a year after Gawker’s controversial redesign

Can you please have the post of Brian Williams’ email to Nick Denton taken down immediately? That was sent in confidence as friends and absolutely never intended to be public. A speedy removal would go a long way in maintaining the trust and respect we have for your site.

– An email from NBC’s PR department requesting that Gawker take down its posting of an email from Brian Williams to Nick Denton, criticizing, among other things, the site’s recently reduced postings on the weekends; the request was added to the original post

Superior writers, videographers and other content makers want to work with their own kind and for their own kind.

– Nick Denton, in his memo to staff on the Gawker empire in 2012

According to sources close to the situation, Dow Jones is losing its top online editor.

Kevin Delaney, managing editor of The Journal Online — or WSJ.com, as it is better known — is taking a job at the Atlantic Media Company, sources said.

The move is a blow to the Journal’s online efforts, as Delaney, who got the top job in late 2009, is a well-regarded journalist and editor.

(He is certainly an AllThingsD.com fave of those at the Dow Jones mother ship, but he still did not call me back to comment! Thanks a lot, Kevin!)

It has not yet been determined who will succeed him at WSJ.com, sources said. Delaney is not leaving immediately.

Delaney joined the media giant in 1992, was a prominent tech reporter in Silicon Valley, and was also deputy managing editor at WSJ.com.

It’s not clear what Delaney’s new position will be at the Washington, D.C.-based Atlantic Media, which is best known for its flagship Atlantic Monthly magazine and also the National Journal.

But sources said his role will be part of a new content initiative the company is undertaking.

The well-known Atlantic has recently transformed itself from a coffee-table, big-think analog offering, which still is published, to focusing more on its online content site.

That includes its sassy Atlantic Wire, which is edited by former Gawker editor Gabriel Snyder. Two stories today, for example, are titled “Where the ‘Crybaby’ Gingrich Meme Came From” and “Cain Promises ‘Unconventional’ Endorsement, Jokes Ensue.”

That’s not your intellectually snotty uncle’s Atlantic!

I am looking forward to seeing what Delaney is up to soon.

(Full disclosure: News Corp.-owned Dow Jones owns AllThingsD.com — but that does not get our calls returned any quicker!)

Nick Denton has something for you: The Gawker Media owner is pawning off Fleshbot, the porn site he has operated for eight years in addition to sites like Gawker, Gizmodo and Deadspin.

In addition to, but not really “along with” — Fleshbot, which is most definitely not safe for many workplaces, has always been kept at a distance from Denton’s other properties, at least when it came to advertising and PR.

It’s not that other Denton sites are prudish — ask Brett Favre — but they’re still in the business of attracting mainstream advertisers. And Fleshbot could never do that.

“As GM has grown, its sales strategy and technology platform have ceased to effectively support Fleshbot’s needs. We think someone else could be a much better partner to grow the site with us,” editor Lux Alptraum wrote in a “for sale” post yesterday.

As with all things Denton, the move will touch off a little wave of speculation about What It All Means, etc. I figured I’d kick things off this morning by asking him myself, via IM.

Denton: “Just hadn’t fit for a long long time.”

Kafka: “y i know. so why not anytime in the last tk years?”

Denton: “Oh, I don’t know. Because I’m slow to realize the inevitable?”

Thanks to AVN for spotting, and Jim Romenesko for aggregating.

Meanwhile! In other Nick Denton news: Denton held a party in his Soho loft last night, to toast the new editors of the Guardian, the U.K. paper that’s trying to establish a footprint in the U.S. (join the club). Had you been there (I wasn’t), you would have seen bold-faced names like the New York Times’ Bill Keller, New York magazine’s Adam Moss, (rhetorical) bomb-thrower Naomi Wolf, and some of the folks who spend time figuring out how to Occupy Wall Street. “Best party ever,” Denton types.

Here’s the host (sitting on the back of the sofa), along with fellow online heavyweights Jacob Weisberg (Slate), Arianna Huffington (duh), Janine Gibson (guardiannews.com) and Henry Blodget (Business Insider). “152 million global uniques,” Denton boasts.

Except not really.

Here’s a video featuring Gawker Media boss Nick Denton; Curbed’s Lockhart Steele, who helped Denton build his business; Rex Sorgatz, a “microcelebrity” once covered obsessively by Denton’s blogs; and Reuters columnist Felix Salmon, who writes about Denton a lot. Also featured: Samantha Ronson, who knows Lindsay Lohan.

If you don’t want to spend a couple minutes watching Salmon narrate the event (and you should, because Felix is an entertaining person even when he’s sober), Sorgatz has the concise version.

Brian John Hogan, 22 years old, and Sage Robert Wallower, 28, pleaded no contest on Tuesday to misdemeanor theft of lost property for selling an Apple Inc. iPhone prototype for $5,000 to a technology blog in 2010. The pair was sentenced to one year of probation and 40 hours of public service, according to San Mateo County District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe.

Messrs. Hogan and Wallower are also required to pay Apple a total of $250 in restitution. Mr. Wagstaffe said the pair are allowed to keep the $4,750 they made on the sale.

The sentencing brings to a conclusion a particularly weird episode — even by Silicon Valley’s skewed standards. At one point, a special police task force kicked in a reporter’s door in search of evidence.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

The site’s new section joins many other sites’ video verticals which bring you clips from around the Web. But unlike some competitors — see: Gawker, Mediaite and others — the Atlantic is taking a relatively old-fashioned approach to aggregation: It’s asking permission from copyright owners to run their stuff.

TheAtlantic.com edit boss Bob Cohn says his site will get a signed licensing agreement from every owner whose stuff gets featured on TheAtlantic.com’s proprietary video player. (The Atlantic will also feature clips from other sites using their own embeddable players — in those cases, it won’t need to ask for permission.)

That doesn’t mean video makers will get paid — compensation will come in the form of links — but the olde-timey practice highlights the different tack the site is taking here. If you want clips of TV news readers saying embarrassing things, or media magnates getting a pie to the face, there are plenty of places to get those. The Atlantic will instead focus on higher-brow, higher-minded stuff that you probably haven’t seen.

Atlantic editor Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg, a former producer at Current TV who Cohn describes as “an embed in the video-generating community,” is in charge of picking the stuff and will also interview some of the creators.

Here’s a sample of what she’s looking for: An excerpt from “California is a Place,” a slice-o-life documentary series:

Aquadettes from California is a place on Vimeo.

AOL will begin rolling out its plans to overhaul its panoply of content sites as early as today, a key part of its integration with the Huffington Post, sources familiar with the situation said.

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong will be sending out an internal memo on the topic soon, said sources with knowledge of the moves.

He will outline how the New York-based Internet portal, which paid $315 million to acquire the high-profile news and opinion site, will essentially close down dozens of its dedicated content sites–some being shuttered completely and others integrated with existing Huffington Post sites.

One example of the first is Politics Daily, as has been previously reported; it will no longer exist as a brand. Its staff is being integrated into the Huffington Post’s more robust political offerings.

It goes both ways, though–the Huffington Post’s travel site will be closed in favor of AOL’s stronger offering in that arena.

And still other well-known AOL brands, such as its PopEater celebrity site and its StyleList fashion and beauty site, will keep their names but no longer exist as separate destination sites. PopEater will be integrated into HuffPo’s entertainment and StyleList to its similar site.

[UPDATE: StyleList's status was shifted just this morning--it will remain a standalone brand and AOL's Shelterpop will become StyleList at Home, integrating into StyleList. Plus it will all now be called Stylist--losing the "e" and capped "L."]

The changes are causing some tension within AOL, given it is a drastic shift from relatively recent efforts to expand its portfolio of editorial sites.

In fact, some insiders are calling the recent vetting of which content sites to close and which to keep as “death panels,” a somewhat dicey reference to controversies over the Obama administration’s healthcare plan.

Also on deck for tomorrow will be letters sent out to freelancers about new plans to hire some–though not all–of them. According to several sources, AOL content head Arianna Huffington outlined the plan to editors recently, stressing the need to focus on staff-generated and more journalistically focused content.

One thing that is not happening is the appointment of a new editor-in-chief for AOL’s flagship tech news site, Engadget.

BoomTown reported on the recent departure of Engadget’s top two editors, Editor-in-Chief Josh Topolsky and Managing Editor Nilay Patel.

The news rocketed around the small echo chamber that is the tech blogosphere, which is no surprise since Engadget is one of the largest sites on the Web covering the tech sector.

In the interim, staffer Darren Murph has been appointed managing editor of Engadget. He reports to Joshua Fruhlinger, editorial director for Engadget, Switched and AOL Tech. Brad Hill is the business director for the properties.

Engadget is one of the largest in tech, with 14 million unique visitors a month. Its main competitor is Gawker’s Gizmodo. AOL also owns TechCrunch, another tech news site.

An email to AOL for comment has not yet been returned.

Josh Topolsky, the editor-in-chief of Engadget, is leaving the AOL-owned property, one of the largest tech news sites on the Web.

Also departing is Managing Editor Nilay Patel, said sources. [UPDATE: Patel delivers the goodbye news himself in a blog post here.]

Sources said the move by Topolsky (pictured here, although the coffee cup is not permanent) and Patel is not out of the tech news arena and both are considering several options.

[UPDATE: Topolsky just confirmed the move in a blog post on Engadget, which is below, writing, in part: "I'm not leaving the industry or the news game--in fact, I've got a few fantasy projects in mind that hopefully you'll be hearing about soon."]

Sources said the departures have been a long time in coming, related to a range of ongoing issues the veteran editors have had working for the large New York-based Internet company. Sources said it was not precipitated by AOL’s recent $315 million acquisition of the Huffington Post.

In fact, AOL’s new content head Arianna Huffington had tried hard to persuade Topolsky to stay on, but that “he had already mentally made up his mind to go.”

This has been a regular occurrence at the site, including two top Engadget editors–Paul Miller and Ross Miller, who are not related–who departed the tech site in recent months. Both stated publicly that they did not like the editorial direction AOL was going in, especially a controversial content strategy document titled “The AOL Way.”

In a post in mid-February, Paul Miller was explicit about the issue on his personal blog:

I’d love to be able to keep doing this forever, but unfortunately Engadget is owned by AOL, and AOL has proved an unwilling partner in this site’s evolution. It doesn’t take a veteran of the publishing world to realize that AOL has its heart in the wrong place with content. As detailed in the “AOL Way,” and borne out in personal experience, AOL sees content as a commodity it can sell ads against. That might make good business sense (though I doubt it), but it doesn’t promote good journalism or even good entertainment, and it doesn’t allow an ambitious team like the one I know and love at Engadget to thrive.

In this case, “The AOL Way” was not the main reason for the departure of Topolsky or Patel (pictured here, looking rather fetching), sources said, but was more about the challenges of working within a large corporate entity.

Engadget is one of the largest in tech, with 14 million unique visitors a month. Its main competitor is Gawker’s Gizmodo. AOL also owns TechCrunch, another tech news site.

BoomTown sent an email to AOL execs for comment and am awaiting a reply.

UPDATE: Topolsky just posted a goodbye on the Engadget titled, “Hello, I Must Be Going”:

It’s hard to believe that I’m currently writing the words I seem to be writing, though a casual stock-taking of my senses dictates that it must be true. Here I am, at my computer, typing letters one by one into a plain text document, rolling along through one of the strangest posts I’ve ever penned for this site. Okay, probably the strangest ever.

After nearly four years at Engadget, it’s time to make my exit. There are things I’m after and challenges I want to take on that just don’t fit with my day-to-day schedule here, so off I go.

I didn’t make this decision lightly. The time I’ve spent here has been–without question–the most amazing, rewarding, and just insanely fun period of my life. And I like to think I’ve had some pretty good times. The Engadget staff is easily the greatest collection of human beings I’ve ever encountered, and they’ve made waking up and freaking out over tech news for 12 to 18 hours a day into basically a party. I’ve never worked so hard or had so much fun doing it. I don’t use religious terms very often, but if there’s such a thing as being blessed, I would say the opportunity I had to work with these people certainly made me feel that way.

And it’s not just the core team at Engadget; all the groups at Weblogs (and its director Brad Hill), have been tremendous friends, partners, and peers.

Then there’s you guys — the readers. The hive mind. The Engadget fan-boys and -girls. It’s hard to sum up my experiences with the readership of Engadget in one paragraph. It would probably be hard in a hundred. But I can say that you’re simply the most informed, passionate, and excited group of people anywhere on the planet. Sure, you can get a little crazy sometimes–but what an astounding group of super-geniuses you are as well. Writing and working for the throngs of people who visit this site every day has been a huge challenge, a learning experience, and just kind of awe-inspiring.

But as I said, it’s time for me to step away. I’m not leaving the industry or the news game–in fact, I’ve got a few fantasy projects in mind that hopefully you’ll be hearing about soon.

Don’t worry though, Engadget is going to keep doing what it does best: being awesome. We have an amazing staff of senior editors and writers that will keep the machine chugging along (and growing!) for years to come. My friend and our editorial director Josh Fruhlinger will be taking on a bigger role in our day-to-day during the transition, and I won’t be completely disappearing from the site–I’ll stay on as editor-at-large, to advise and direct when necessary. I’ll also be sticking around to host more episodes of the Engadget Show, so you can continue to get your fix (if you’re into nerdy video shows about gadgets and technology, that is).

And with that, I’m shuffling over towards the door, just underneath that dim exit sign that keeps blinking on and off, its fluorescent bulbs cracking with some syncopated rhythm all their own. It’s just started to rain a little bit outside, but I’ve got my coat and umbrella. I’ll be fine, and so will you.

Till we meet again…

Gawker was told about the flaw in the method it used to store user passwords to its commenting system more than two years before it was hacked, the Guardian’s Charles Arthur reports.

A Gawker user posted a message on Get Satisfaction and received a promise to “improve it,” though no such improvement ever took place.

Well, we know how that turned out. A hacker group called Gnosis gained entry not only to the commenting system, but also to pretty much everything the Gawker team used to run its collection of sites.

Gawker was hacked. Gawker founder Nick Denton apologized. But the damage wasn’t limited to Gawker and its users.

Soon Twitter and LinkedIn were dealing with hacking attacks on their sites. Then Yahoo and World of Warcraft developer Blizzard forced users to change their passwords. And finally the collateral damage reached all the way to the New York Times.

We also learned that many of the people whose passwords were disclosed used simple ones. Topping the list: “123456.” And we all learned a little about the dangers of using the same password everywhere.

No comment yet from Denton, although I’ll certainly update if I hear back from him.

And in case you didn’t pay enough attention to all this, and why it’s not a good idea to share passwords across multiple sites, here’s a great cartoon from XKCD that illustrates the dangers:

Within two days, sites like LinkedIn and later Blizzard Entertainment and Yahoo had advised their users to change their passwords.

The latest company caught up in all this is the New York Times. A little more than an hour ago, the Times sent an email to customers (see below) whose email addresses appeared in a searchable database of compromised Gawker commenting accounts, warning them that if they used the same password on nytimes.com as they did on Gawker, it would be a good idea to change it. There is no evidence of any funny business on the Times’ Web site.

Incidentally, in case you missed it, Gawker’s technology head, Thomas Plunkett, circulated a memo detailing what happened at Gawker and what it plans to do in response to the incident. One thing it will do is offer disposable commenting accounts that users can ditch easily, and for which storing an email address won’t be required.

Here is the email from the Times:

NYTimes.com Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 5:15 PM
Reply-To: nytdirect@nytimes.com

In case you missed our recent article “Gawker Sites Hacked and Passwords Compromised”
http://nyti.ms/hjNvlY we are writing to inform you that databases belonging to Gawker Media were compromised and hackers obtained more than one million user names, e-mail addresses and passwords.

While there is no evidence of suspicious activity on NYTimes.com we wanted you to know that
the e-mail address you registered with NYTimes.com matches an e-mail address that was on
the list of Gawker e-mail addresses and passwords that were published online.

If you use the same password for NYTimes.com as you did for Gawker, we strongly recommend you change your password. Changing your NYTimes.com password can be accomplished by visiting the Member Center page: http://www.nytimes.com/membercenter. After logging in to your account, click on the ‘change’ button associated with the password field which can be found under the Account Summary heading.

Here’s a Gadgetwise post with tips on developing a good password (in brief: do not make it a real word, keep it long and mix in an unusual combination of letters and numbers).
http://nyti.ms/gGR3kz

Please contact Customer Support at 1-800-698-4637 or e-mail customercare@nytimes.com with any questions.

Have a safe and happy holiday season.

The New York Times Company
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10018

Here’s a sample, from Google’s blog post announcing the change (via SearchEngineLand). Click on the image to enlarge:

Google has already been flagging sites it thinks are distributing malware, so this is just an incremental step. And Google apparently thinks a “compromised” site is less dangerous than one it thinks “may harm your computer”: If you click on the link for the latter, Google will send you to an “are you really sure you want to go there?” message, but Google won’t actually slow you down if you want to head to a hacked site.

[Image credit: Picture Perfect Pose]

However, we’re starting to get more information about how the McDonald’s incident appears connected to hacking incidents at other sites. Chicago Business is reporting that the company responsible for McDonald’s email marketing is Silverpop Systems, and that it had been operating under a subcontract from Chicago-based Arc Worldwide.

So who else is a customer of Silverpop? Yesterday I received an email from someone who’s a customer of deviantArt, a social network where artists share their creations. DeviantArt has a base of 13 million users. Got an account there? You’d better change any passwords that overlap with other sites. The site advised customers that their accounts were compromised, and blamed Silverpop.

It could extend much further yet. Silverpop has more than 100 clients, and not all of them are publicly disclosed, though here are a few, found on its client quotes page and its case studies page: Stamps.com, Pitney Bowes/Mapinfo, Encyclopedia Britannica, Santander Consumer Finance and watchmaker Fossil. There’s no word how any of those other companies are affected, if at all.

Silverpop CEO Bill Nussey said in a blog message to customers that the FBI is investigating the incident, and that only a small percentage of Silverpop customers have been affected. He also said that Silverpop was “among several technology providers targeted as part of a broader cyber attack.” Stacy Kirk, a Silverpop spokeswoman, wouldn’t say anything beyond what’s in Nussey’s message.

I’m beginning to wonder if there’s some indirect connection between what happened to Silverpop and what happened to Gawker. I’m speculating here, but it’s no stretch of the imagination that numbering among deviantArt’s 13 million users are some of the 1.5 million people whose accounts were compromised in the Gawkergate affair. And the FBI is investigating both. Thomas Plunkett, Gawker’s technology chief, told me by email that there’s no evidence of a connection. Then again, as Business Insider tells it, he hasn’t yet had his meeting with the FBI.

Maybe I’m looking for connections that aren’t really there, but it’s really not hard to see how the breach at Gawker could turn out be the start of a domino effect that’s much larger than anyone has yet realized. There certainly is a lot of grumbling about changing passwords today.

If you know more more about any of this, get in touch!

Below is the email to deviantArt users.

From: deviantART.com (address deleted)
Date: Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 5:54 AM
Subject: RE: Email Notice

Silverpop Systems, Inc., a leading marketing company that sends email messages for its clients, told us that information was taken from its servers. This was probably part of a sweep by spammers. As a result, email addresses belonging to deviantART members were copied. Corresponding usernames and birth date may also have been removed.

We can assure you that nothing occurred on our systems with respect to this incident and no access was gained to private information on deviantART’s servers.

As a member of deviantART, you certainly have a right to know when an incident of this kind occurs. Unfortunately spammers are an unavoidable part of living on the Web.

The likely result of this event might be an increase in spam to your email. Experts have told us that there is an increase in email scams out there on the Internet and you should be cautious. Only click links or download attachments from people you know, particularly if they ask for personal information, and be sure that your email service provider has adequate spam filters.

Because we value the information that members give us, we have decided not to rely on the services of Silverpop in the future and their servers will no longer hold any data from us.

Yahoo spokeswoman Dana Lengkeek just emailed a statement saying that some Yahoo users were required to reset their passwords. “As part of our ongoing security measures we issued a password reset to some users. Yahoo! does this periodically to ensure the security of users.” She didn’t specify whether or not this was in direct response to the Gawker incident, but it’s not hard to conclude that it was, given the timing. I’ll update if Yahoo says anything further.

I have a Yahoo account and was required to change my password today, and yes, I also had a Gawker commenting account, so at this point it’s safe to say they certainly seem connected.

Meanwhile, Blizzard Entertainment (developer of World of Warcraft and provider of the Battle.net gaming service) was abundantly clear about the connection in an email to its customers. “We’ve recently been informed that several Gawker Media websites have been compromised…To help minimize the effects of this compromise and help keep your Battle.net account safe and secure, we’ve reset your account password,” it said.

Other Web incidents–perhaps connected to Gawkergate, perhaps not–have occurred during the past few days as well. For instance, McDonald’s disclosed that a database containing email address and birthdates of people who had signed up to receive promotions was compromised. It notified those customers on Monday. Again, it’s not clear what connection, if any, there may be to the Gawker incident, but the timing certainly makes it seem possible. I’ve asked McDonald’s for a comment and will update if I get one.

In another incident, drugstore chain Walgreens disclosed on Friday that a database of email address belonging to its customers had been breached. Given the timing–the Gawker incident happened over the weekend–it’s probably not connected, though it’s hard to be sure, as the folks at Anonymous Gnosis, the group that attacked the Gawker sites, say they’ve had access to the database for about a month. I’ve asked a Walgreens spokesman for a comment, and as with all the other cases above will update if I hear back.

This comes on top of other related forced password changes at Twitter and LinkedIn, as my colleague Peter Kafka reported earlier today.

Meanwhile, our friends at Digits have a fascinating graphic on the Top 50 passwords used on Gawker. Topping the list: “123456,” “password” and “12345678.” The two lessons in all this? Make your passwords complex, and don’t use the same password for multiple sites.

Example 1: Twitter saw a rash of promotional tweets for a bogus berry weight-loss product, the result of a security breach thought to be connected to the Gawker break-in.

Example 2: LinkedIn has temporarily disabled the accounts of any users whose email addresses turned up in the public database of hacked accounts. It’s asking those users to reset their passwords.

LinkedIn PR guy Hani Durzy says the move, which started yesterday afternoon, has only affected a “small fraction” of LinkedIn’s 85 million members. He says the social network made the decision proactively, not because it had any evidence that any accounts had been misused;  LinkedIn now has a blog post on the topic.

Some context/math: Gawker has said it has had to notify users of 1.5 million email addresses to change their passwords following the break-in.

If, for argument’s sake, half of those emails belonged to LinkedIn users, that would be less than one percent of the company’s user base. And likely much less: For some reason I have two emails connected to my single LinkedIn account. And both were exposed during Gawkergate, so I got two emails this morning.

No real debacles so far, but that doesn’t mean we won’t see them. Who’s next?

Even without that freakish Thanksgiving treat, the Web is full of fun diversions on every topic, including the thankful, enhanced-patted-down long weekend of consumption Americans have ahead of us.

Read on for some of my Thanksgiving ephemeralia picks for this year:

Here’s a historical tidbit I became aware of after reading the National Archives online today: Did you know that in 1863 President Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving a national holiday to be held on the fourth Thursday in November, but in 1939 President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed it to the third Thursday to “to lengthen the Christmas shopping season and boost the economy which was still recovering from the Depression”?

The National Archives Web site also provides some documents from Thanksgiving throughout the years, including this one of President Richard Nixon and a turkey.

On to the food. Want to impress your guests with something less passé than, but still thematically consistent with, Turducken? You are in luck. Here are two fantastic alternatives, via YouTube:

The Cherpumple consists of three full pies encased in three full cakes (via @hunterwalk):

Or, there’s the TurBaconEpic (a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig):

“Good Morning America” tries, and fails, to demonstrate how to put out a grease fire (via Gawker.tv):

As for the other topic at hand on this holiday–the new widely derided U.S. airport security procedures–everybody’s favorite Taiwanese animators at Next Media Animation have prepared their usual insightful commentary (from last week, but still good):

For further reading:

• Engadget’s frequently updated list of Black Friday gadget deals.
• Boing Boing’s roundup of Thanksgiving science.
• The Wall Street Journal’s report on using your phone to find shopping deals. Google says there are 30 times more mobile shopping searches than three years ago (though that’s smaller than I would think given the growth of the mobile Internet in that time).

That’s despite the fact that Palin’s publisher HarperCollins filed a lawsuit yesterday against Gawker Media, citing copyright infringement. The post in question is still up there for anyone to read. Palin’s new book,  “America By Heart”, will be officially released Tuesday. [UPDATE: It's gone now, following a federal injunction].

I’m not sure what legal case HarperCollins can make here. Pre-publication book leaks are exceedingly common, and happen most often because news organizations simply buy the books, from stores, before their official release date.

HarperCollins’ statement, via spokeswoman Erin Crum: “We believe that the reprinting of pages from Governor Palin’s book without permission constitutes a blatant infringement of copyright. HarperCollins sent a cease and desist letter to Gawker, which was ignored. Accordingly, HarperCollins has filed a lawsuit in federal court in New York to stop the infringement and to protect our legal rights in the content of the book.”

Gawker hasn’t explained how it acquired the excerpts, but it’s not the only place you can find bits of the book on the Web. Gawker has published a response to the lawsuit, titled “Sarah Palin is Mad At Us for Leaking Pages From Her Book”.

I’ve asked both Gawker for comment. Harper Collins is owned by News Corp. as is this Web site.

Legal issues aren’t new for Gawker Media, which often angers people with its provocative and popular posts. What’s different here is that the Palin book has attracted very little attention, at least by the published metrics that Gawker displays next to each post: As of Saturday morning, the excerpts had attracted a mere 52,000 views.

That’s pretty small beans by Gawker standards. A piece published Friday, for instance, which purports to detail John Travolta’s “secret sex life”, has nearly double the traffic, at 90,000 views.

And those numbers really pale in comparison to Gawker posts that have generated legal threats. Last year, for instance, the company published a sorta-sex tape featuring actors from “Grey’s Anatomy” that generated 3.5 million views.

And most famously, a post showing off Apple’s stolen/lost iPhone4 prototype generated more than 13 million views this year. In that incident, police seized a Gawker Media employee’s property, but have yet to charge Gawker with a crime.

But it’s worth noting that Gawker eventually settled with the Grey’s Anatomy actors, and pulled the video off its site.

If you’re in a hurry, though, you can get a good sense of Denton, at least in present tense, via this clip. It’s an abridged version of my onstage chat with the Gawker Media founder at an Interactive Advertising Bureau event last month, and the editors have done a nice job of distilling it down to seven minutes. Bonus for you guys: This thing is so well-edited that I don’t appear in a single frame.

And if you’re in a real hurry, here’s the money quote, which I extracted from Denton by asking him if he thinks what Gawker does is “journalism”:

In the U.S., traditional media has killed itself. And it’s provided a great opportunity for organizations like us, because they have cared too much about the journalism, about the Pulitzers, about the respect of their peers–and too little about the entertainment of their readers.”

If you’re looking for more detail from our talk, which included Denton lavishing praise on Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs but refusing to shed any light on the Gizmodo/iPhone 4 case, check out David Kaplan’s summary at PaidContent.

This one comes from Christopher Mascari, a Gawker Media marketing guy, and it illustrates the blog network’s traffic from social media sites. Less than a year ago, Digg was the single most important social site for Gawker, Gizmodo, Jalopnik et al. Now it has been eclipsed by the likes of Facebook, Twitter and, a little surprisingly, StumbleUpon. And note that Reddit, Condé Nast’s “Digg clone,” is catching up as well:

The other big takeaway from the data is the story that many publishers have been telling in the past year or so: Social traffic is becoming as important, or more so, than search traffic from the likes of Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO). Last fall Gawker was getting 10 million visits a month from social sites; now that number is up to 20 million. And Facebook, at 7.7 million visits, now represents more than a third of that number:

You can see what Denton is up to by visiting his “beta” sites, which are open to the public: beta.gawker.com, beta.deadspin.com, etc.

Check out the difference between Gawker.com’s current homepage and the beta version and you’ll get the basic gist: Instead of a river of stories floating down the middle of the page, there’s one big one, a couple of secondary ones and then a menu bar linking to the rest of the site.

But if you really want to see where Denton is headed, make sure you find one of his pages featuring super-sized art. You can get a sense from these screenshots (click to enlarge), but it’s really best to visit the individual pages, where you’ll see that these images take up the full width of your screen:

This is where Denton wants to end up: stories–and ads–that fill up your screen. Sound familiar?

“Web media needs to move to TV metaphor–with full-screen imagery and other content interrupted with full-screen ads,” he tells me via email.  “Everything right now is so, um, bitty.”

Which is funny, because Denton’s last redesign shrank lots of elements on the page so he could cram more stuff in. You’ll still see evidence of it today on his sites, with the occasional headline-only story. And if you look around the blogosphere, you’ll find plenty of people following suit. (Even All Things D has introduced something we’re calling a “newsbyte.”)

But plenty of Web-ad sellers have been pushing super-sized stuff for some time now–see the ginormous ad units that the Online Publishers Association pushed out last year or Yahoo’s (YHOO) transformation of its login page.

And in the last few months I’ve seen a new ad unit on Huffington Post and Business Insider that fills my entire screen with a short video ad before sending me along to my “free content.” Just like, um, TV.

So Denton is either on to something here or maybe even a little bit behind the curve. That can’t be right, can it?

“We can confirm that Gawker Media was contacted by the FBI earlier today and issued a formal preservation notice,” Valleywag said in its post.

Gawker Media publicized the incident Wednesday after being contacted by a small group of computer experts calling itself Goatse Security. The group said it discovered the flaw, explaining that it was able to find the email addresses by guessing numbers that identify iPads connected to AT&T’s mobile network. The group said it uncovered 114,000 email addresses, including those of prominent officials in companies, politics and the military.

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Recently, though, I’ve talked to some mobile ad companies that are more hopeful. They think Apple will let them compete with its iAd platform in a fair fight.

Maybe they’re saying that because they have to appear optimistic. Maybe they really believe it. But I think they’re wrong. I think Apple intends to own the ad market for its app ecosystem.

A refresher: No one says Steve Jobs is formally preventing rival ad networks from selling ads within the 200,000-plus apps his gadgets support. But the language in the developer agreement for Apple’s new mobile operating system reads as if the company is effectively crippling competitors, by making it hard for them to target ads and track their performance.

That ability, which requires transmitting data from iPhones and iPads to third parties, is standard in Web advertising. But Jobs’s agreement seems either to rule it out altogether or require “opt-in” approval from consumers. Which is almost like ruling it out.

The optimistic mobile ad folks, whom I talked to on background, think things won’t be so dire. They make a couple arguments to support their “we’ll be okay” reasoning.

1) “We’re talking to people at Apple, and they’re hinting that we’ll be okay. Or that at the very least, things haven’t been settled yet.”
2) “It makes no sense for Apple to shut out other mobile ad guys. What it really wants to do is encourage developers to build for the iPhone/iPad, by helping them make more money. The best way to do that is to allow multiple ad networks.”

The problem with these arguments:

1) At a different company, you could argue that a developer agreement is just legalese, not a strategy. But Steve Jobs seems to takes his developer agreements quite seriously. Remember when it looked like he was using a clause in the new contract to kick Adobe (ADBE) and Flash in the teeth? Turns out he really was trying to kick Adobe and Flash in the teeth.

2) Sure, Jobs could generate more money for himself and his developers by opening up his platform to outside ad networks. But you could make the same “open it up” argument about his App Store, and that’s not happening. Instead, Apple insists on approving every app, by hand. Apple also insists on approving the tools developers use to build their apps. If you want to build for a platform that lets in every app, Jobs argues, head over to Google’s (GOOG) Android. It will even let you use Flash.

Not convinced? Check out the first thing Jobs wrote to Gawker’s Ryan Tate over the weekend*. Apple, Jobs said, was offering “freedom from programs that steal your private data.”

I’m almost certain that Jobs is talking about apps and ad targeting there. And sources tell me Apple (AAPL) is defending its policies to federal regulators with the same argument: We’re doing this to protect our users’ privacy.

And perhaps that really is Apple’s primary intent. But it looks like the effect is the same regardless of their motive: It’s going to be very hard for outside ad companies to sell ads inside Apple’s apps.

*I believe, but don’t know, that the Jobs-Tate exchange is authentic.

[Image credit: stp243]

But while this saga is almost designed for bloggy hyperbole — Cops! Busting down doors! Confiscating iPads! — the legal issue here is pretty straightforward.

It boils down to this: Does the San Mateo District Attorney’s office believe that Gizmodo Editor Jason Chen committed a crime by buying a prototype iPhone for $5,000?

If they do, then the California shield law Chen’s bosses at Gawker Media are citing won’t do them much good. Because the law doesn’t give journalists the ability to commit crimes.

But if authorities are really pursuing the guy who sold Chen the phone, then the shield law should protect Chen and his employers. Because keeping the cops from busting down your door so they can uncover your sources is one of the things the shield law is supposed to do.

That’s about it. Really.

Of course there’s more to chew on, if you have an appetite. For instance, if you want to know why a prototype iPhone that was supposedly left at a bar could be considered stolen goods, you can consult bloggers John Gruber and Jeff Bercovici, who believe this to be the case.

So does Apple (AAPL), according to the Wall Street Journal:

Stephen Wagstaffe, the chief deputy district attorney for San Mateo County, said Apple contacted authorities and “advised us there had been a theft,” which led to the search warrant and an investigation.

You can also feel free to spend time speculating about less important parts about the tale. Like why Gawker Media owner Nick Denton, who says his only loyalty is to his readers, sat on this engrossing story for three days.

One line of questioning that that doesn’t deserve a single brain cell: “Do bloggers count as journalists?”

Denton threw that one out yesterday, suggesting that the case somehow pitted The Man vs. The Web (and everything Good). And I’ve seen some people who should know better take him up on it.

But that’s a facile phrasing and Denton knows it. Because there’s zero question that people who work for a news organization — that’s what Gawker Media is, whether you like it or not — and use blogging tools are journalists. Or at least there’s no question that they get the same protection that “traditional” journalists do.

If you’ve got a lot of extra time on your hands, you might ponder what legal carve-outs like shield laws mean in an era when everyone can be their own private news organization. Whether they make a living at it — and can afford legal counsel — or not.

Luckily for Jason Chen and his employers, though, that’s not an issue here.

Mr. Snyder is coming to Newsweek on the eve of the relaunch of Newsweek.com. In a memo to Newsweek’s staff, Newsweek editors Jon Meacham and Mark Miller credited Mr. Snyder for transforming Gawker from “what was a guilty pleasure for a Manhattan-centric audience to a source of real news and information, doubling Gawker’s audience.” Mr. Snyder starts on May 3 and will be responsible for helping to grow the audience of Newsweek.com and the magazine’s other digital offerings, Messrs. Meacham and Miller wrote.

Mr. Snyder held the top editorial post at Gawker for 18 months until February, when Gawker Media acquired Cityfile and offered Mr. Snyder’s old job to Cityfile founder Remy Stern. Mr. Snyder was offered another job at Gawker that he declined.

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