Last night, members of the New York media gathered to toast The Atlantic and the incredible year the publication — and its parent company — have had.

There was plenty to celebrate. This year, the title reported a 16 percent increase in advertising revenue, thanks to a 115 percent increase in digital revenue. Events and subscription revenues also saw a boost, with digital subscription revenues climbing 158 percent. What’s more, 2009 saw the launch of the company’s new digital property, The Atlantic Wire, as well as politics, business and food channels on TheAtlantic.com.

“We had such an incredible year,” publisher Jay Lauf told us last night.

And there were plenty of people on hand last night to celebrate that year with Lauf and The Atlantic‘s president Justin Smith, including Glynnis MacNicol and Rachel Sklar of Mediaite.com, All Things D‘s Peter Kafka, John Carney of Silicon Alley Insider, New York Times reporter Brian Stelter and PRNewser editor Joe Ciarallo.

More pictures after the jump

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Technology and the media converged today on the mediabistro.com Morning Media Menu podcast, when host Jason Boog of GalleyCat and Joe Ciarallo of PRNewser welcomed Peter Kafka, tech and media writer for the blog AllThingsD.com.

Jason and Joe picked Pete’s brain about a few of the things he’s been covering closely, including the joint venture between the biggest magazine publishers that he’s been calling “Hulu for Magazines.” Joe asked Pete for his thoughts on the recent press release officially announcing the project.

“They haven’t launched a thing,” Pete said. “All they’ve really done is said, ‘We have an idea, which we’ve agreed to, which is that we’re going to band together and work on distribution and sales of these products that don’t exist yet.’…But really the most important idea really is the fact that they are going to try to control distribution prior to ever building anything.”

“Right now when a magazine actually sells you a subscription they know who you are, they know what your credit card number is, they want all of that,” he went on. “And they want to be able to go to Amazon, Apple and Google for that matter and say, ‘Look, if you want to sell these magazines, you’re going to need to work through us and we’re going to set prices and we’re going to control that relationship.’ That is the most important thing right now.”

Also discussed: Vevo, Boxee, Google and the dueling Wall Street Journal op-eds from Rupert Murdoch and Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Read more of Peter’s thoughts every day at AllThingsD.

You can listen to all the past podcasts at BlogTalkRadio.com/mediabistro and call in at 646-929-0321.

Just one week after launching celebrity and style gossip blog HollywoodLife.com under Bonnie Fuller, senior reporter Corynne Steindler took a few minutes to join the mediabistro.com Morning Media Menu podcast with host Jason Boog of GalleyCat and guest host Joe Ciarallo, editor of PRNewser.

Corynne talked about her new job at HollywoodLife as well as her career from the gossipy blog Jossip to The New York Post‘s gossip column Page Six and beyond.

“When I started at Jossip I was reporting a bit but I was mostly musing on the media news that had already been out there,” she explained. “I was breaking stories but not consistently. So when I went to Page Six I really honed those reporting skills and really learned how to break news, get exclusives, report — like really report, not just throw in my opinion on something. And so I think by combining those skills, it made HollywoodLife the perfect place for me to move on to.”

Corynne also let Jason and Joe in on Bonnie Fuller’s role at HollywoodLife. “She’s here every day,” Corynne said about Bonnie, who she once interned under at American Media Inc. “She’s blogging. She’s editing. She’s discussing news stories and ideas with the staff. She’s helping choose photos. She’s totally, totally involved. And I sit right next to her, so it’s pretty awesome. We work really closely together to try to build the site every day.”

Also discussed: Corynne’s advice for aspiring gossip writers, what’s next for HollywoodLife and her craziest celebrity story.

You can listen to all the past podcasts at BlogTalkRadio.com/mediabistro and call in at 646-929-0321.

Today on the mediabistro.com Morning Media Menu podcast, hosts Jason Boog of GalleyCat and AgencySpy‘s Matt Van Hoven welcomed PRNewser editor Joe Ciarallo to talk about the day’s biggest media news.

On tap today: Jason discussed last night’s National Book Awards (see GalleyCat for full coverage) and Matt talked about an ad for Sarah Palin‘s book Going Rogue running during “The Rachel Maddow Show.”

“We do have standing a call and emails, multiple, out to Tina Andreadis at HarperCollins, the director of publicity,” Joe said. “We imagine she’s quite busy with the book launch, but we do want to get her take so Tina, if you’re listening, call us.”

You can listen to all the past podcasts at BlogTalkRadio.com/mediabistro and call in at 646-929-0321.

On the morning after the conclusion of mediabistro.com’s user-generated content focused conference UGCX, Matt Van Hoven of AgencySpy and guest host Joe Ciarallo of PRNewser welcomed BuzzFeed.com‘s viral media editor Jessica Amason to the Morning Media Menu podcast.

Following up on her presentation at UGCX on Tuesday, Amason talked about tracking the viral presence of Web articles in real time and making it work for advertisers.

The group also addressed some of the changes that traditional media companies are making in order to stay alive. Said Amason: “I think that testing the waters with new ideas about revenue and about advertising wouldn’t be a bad thing. I don’t exactly know what that would mean for them…but I think that thinking outside of CPM and the standard model certainly couldn’t hurt. They certainly could benefit from thinking in a social way.”

Amason also talked about her Tumblr blog This Is Why You’re Fat that has since developed into a book, available in stores next week. “When we launched it we thought it would be a pretty contagious idea,” she said. “We thought it might make an interesting book some day, but we didn’t think we would have a book deal within the first month because it really took off.”

Related: FBLA Exclusive Interview With This Is Why You’re Fat Co-Founder

You can listen to all the past podcasts at BlogTalkRadio.com/mediabistro and call in at 646-929-0321.

Today on the media- bistro.com Morning Media Menu podcast, host Jason Boog of GalleyCat and special guest host Joe Ciarallo from PRNewser welcomed author Shani Petroff, who has penned the four-book Bedeviled series about a teenage girl whose father is the devil.

“[My books are] supernatural for the younger sister,” Petroff said, noting that girls that are not quite old enough for Stephenie Meyers‘ Twilight series are the ideal audience for her Bedeviled series.

Petroff also spoke about some of the challenges facing the publishing industry and some of the publicity she’s been doing for her series. She also offered some advice for writers looking to get published.

“Stick with it,” she said. “For me, Bedeviled was not the first thing I wrote but it is the first thing that got published, and I’m really excited about it. But if I had given up after the first thing I wrote, I wouldn’t be where I am right now. So I think the first thing is just believing in your stuff and following through and keeping at it.”

Also discussed: today’s big media headlines, including Twitter’s $100 million in venture capital funding and the growth of paid iPhone apps.

You can learn more about Petroff and her first Bedeviled book “Daddy’s Little Angel” at www.ShaniPetroff.com.

You can listen to all the past podcasts at BlogTalkRadio.com/mediabistro and call in at 646-929-0321.

Joe Ciarallo, the new full-time editor of Mediabistro’s PR blog PRNewser, joined hosts Jason Boog of GalleyCat and AgencySpy‘s Matt Van Hoven on today’s mediabistro.com Morning Media Menu podcast.

Joe talked about his plans to expand PRNewser’s coverage and Mediabistro’s PR-related content, as well as some problems within the PR industry.

“From last fall on through the spring there was a big cutback,” he said. “Marketing is often the first thing to go, so that was obviously a challenge for a lot of internal marketing teams and agencies. Budgets weren’t the same. A lot of firms get paid a monthly retainer…the Council of PR Firms, which monitored over 100 agencies in their surveys, said the retainer average was down I think 30 percent. So a lot of people are expecting that to bounce back and we are seeing a lot of positive signs lately.”

Besides the recession, PR agencies are being challenged by the growth of social media and learning how to reign it in and use it to their advantage, Joe said. “We’re building the car as we’re driving down the highway at 60 miles an hour,” he said.

Also discussed: how PR agencies handle internal publicity, covering the PR industry past and present and the huge success of Dan Brown‘s new book, “The Lost Symbol.”

You can listen to all the past podcasts at BlogTalkRadio.com/mediabistro and call in at 646-929-0321.

Today on the media-bistro.com Morning Media Menu podcast, journalist and author Ethan Brown joined host Jason Boog of GalleyCat and special co-host PRNewser‘s Joe Ciarallo to discus his nonfiction tome “Shake the Devil Off.”

As Ethan explained, the book focuses on a gruesome murder-suicide involving an Iraq war veteran in New Orleans. The author of three books, Ethan talked about his transition from magazine writer and freelancer to author. “The driving force behind working on my first book was my frustration with the post-9/11 recession in the media world,” he said. “I’ve been in the book world primarily since 2003 with some freelancing, but not much.”

Ethan’s book also uncovers the failure of the veteran’s services in the U.S. and the affect of PTSD on veterans, and he talked about the coverage of these things in the media. Ethan also discussed his feelings about the public’s current interest in fiction and fantasy over investigative reporting and nonfiction like his work. “I do think from reviewers there is a tendency to keep the superstars that have been there for awhile there,” he said.

You can find out more about Ethan at EthanBrown.com.

You can listen to all the past podcasts at BlogTalkRadio.com/mediabistro and call in at 646-929-0321.

If you were at our Hacks ‘n Flacks party in July, you may remember Joe Ciarallo as the PRNewser editor who crushed FishbowlNY editor Amanda Ernst in the first round of the Guitar Hero showdown.

Although he’s been working as the freelance editor of PRNewser since the beginning, today Joe joined the Mediabistro.com team full-time so he can work on expanding PRNewser’s content and producing other PR-related events like classes and Webcasts.

While many journalists make the jump to PR, we’re proud to point out that Joe has left his gig at the Horn Group, a digital communications agency in Manhattan, in order to become a hack just like us! At the next Hacks ‘n Flacks party, will he be playing for the other team?

PRNewser: Joe Ciarallo Joins Mediabistro.com As PRNewser Editor

(Photo by Kelly Samardak)

If you like looking at pictures of media people looking goofy, check out some more pictures from our Flacks ‘n Hacks party on Monday night here. In the one at left, PRNewser editor Joe Ciarallo tries to literally beat FishbowlNY editor Amanda Ernst after brutally beating her in Guitar Hero. Don’t worry — no blog editors were harmed throughout the night.

Broadcasting & Cable‘s David Tanklefsky also wrote about his experiences playing Guitar Hero on Monday. He may be no Hendrix but, hey, neither are we!