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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All of the (op-ed) stars were out last night to celebrate the launch of Atlantic Wire, the opinion aggregating sister site to TheAtlantic.com.

Writers for The Atlantic and TheAtlantic.com like Corby Kummer, Marc Ambinder, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Megan McArdle sipped champagne or checked out the incredible view from the balcony at The Glass Houses on the top floor of the Chelsea Arts Tower, as slides of the Atlantic 50 streamed above the bar.

Atlantic Consumer Media chair David Bradley, president Justin Smith and editor James Bennet later said a few words for the crowd, which included The New York Times‘s Frank Rich and David Carr, Rachel Sklar and Glynnis MacNicol from Mediaite.com and AOL DailyFinance‘s Jeff Bercovici.

“We like to fight with each other,” Bennet said of the impetus behind launching Atlantic Wire, which gathers some of the best opinions on the biggest topics of the day in one place.

Bradley, who leads arguably one of the few media companies that is growing despite the recession, offered some advice to would-be media moguls. “Before you own a media company, you should own a company that does well,” he said, noting how his previous experience in business allowed him to effectively operate Atlantic Consumer Media.

Well he certainly knows how to put on a party.

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It’s sort of fitting that my last FBNY post should be about The Atlantic dinner/conversation I attended earlier this evening, which featured Michael Hirschorn and Andrew Sullivan, since this post was actually my first foray into this whole blogging thing (and remains my top Google result).

The talk — the dinner part included chili, cornbread, and brownies — was billed in the invite as “A Conversation on the Future of Media” and the crowd that packed Justin Smith‘s downtown apartment included a whole lot of very recognizable New York Media names who will no doubt be heavily involved in that very Future. Here’s a non-exhaustive list: Bonnie Fuller, Harry Smith, Richard Perez-Pena, Nick Denton, Tad Friend, Duff McDonald, Gabriel Snyder, Jeff Bercovici, Matt Haber, Danny Shea, Brian Stelter, Rachel Sklar, Jon Fine, Dylan Stableford, Laurel Touby, James Bennett…and also, strangely(?), (the very tall) Sigourney Weaver.

Alas, neither Sullivan nor Hirschorn appeared to have any definite ideas about what ‘Media’ might look in the future other than that it would probably be very different from what we currently have, but also that the New York Times is in a lot of trouble. For those of you keeping score Andrew Sullivan still reads the dead tree edition of the Times every morning and does not Twitter. @LaurelTouby, @BrianStelter, and @RachelSklar, however, all have nice tweets from the party. Now(!), before I sign off for good here’s a couple of other interesting things I read today:

TheAtlantic.com — in our opinion is one of the Web’s best success stories in terms of how to establish a magazine online — is apparently looking to spread its wings even further. PaidContent spoke to Justin Smith, president of Atlantic Consumer Media who says that the site has plans to “buy or invest in content sites that can complement TheAtlantic.com‘s coverage.”

Meaning? Says Smith: “We’ve moved away from the general nature of commentary on the site and have been looking to do more breaking news, like the item we ran on Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff e-mails…And we’ve been able to prove that long-form journalism can work on the web, as long as you have a blockbuster piece. For example, Nicholas Carr‘s cover story, Is Google Making Us Stupid?, from last July, got 1 million pageviews. More recently, a piece on the economic collapse, The Quiet Coup, got 1.5 million pageviews in just five days.” PC breaks it all down in more detail here.

— DIANE CLEHANE

We’re still exhausted from hob nobbing with last week’s overflow of A-listers, so we were almost glad things were a bit more subdued at 55th & Fifth today. It gave us a chance to catch up and chat with some our favorite regulars. Imagine my chagrin when I stopped by Matt Blank‘s table and Showtime’s CEO told me had I switched my weekly reservation to tomorrow, I’d be chatting with some of the biggest stars of his network. On Thursday, Matt and entertainment president Bob Greenblatt are hosting their own “British invasion” at table one when the entire glorious cast of The Tudors — the dreamy Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Peter O’Toole and Natalie Dormer will be breaking bread with the network’s other stars — including Tracy Ullman, whose show State of the Union, will premiere March 30, the same night as the new season of The Tudors. Thank God, something to watch! (I’ve been completely depressed over the fast approaching season finale of HBO’s In Treatment…) Also in attendance, says Matt, will be Billie Piper, who stars in — and we’re not kidding — the upcoming Secret Diaries of a Call Girl, which will premiere in June. Talk about timely. Perhaps the newly unemployed Eliot Spitzer can make a cameo appearance.

Here’s the rundown on today’s crowd:

1. Gerry Imber, Jerry Della Femina and the gang with Fox News’ Monica Crowley.

2. Showtime’s chairman and CEO Matt Blank with über producer Michael Davies.

3. “Mayor” Joe Armstrong and Glamoureditrix Cindi Leive (Glad you hear you’re a loyal “Lunch” reader!). The Mayor was celebrating with his friend Cindi over a glass of red wine — and a few asparagus spears — about her big news. Minutes before lunch, Cindi found out Glamour is a finalist for the fourth year in a row for the National Magazine Award for General Excellence. No woman’s magazine has ever been so honored! The worthy competitors: Time, People, National Geographic and Martha Stewart Living. Congrats! Before Cindi and Joe tucked into their lunch, we unanimously decided New York‘s Spitzer cover this week is one for the ages. Brilliant!

4. Norman Pearlstine and a young gent no one seemed to know …

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That’s what we wondered after we heard word late today of Elizabeth Spiers‘ abrupt exit from the blog network she founded last year. (Spiers wrote in an e-mail that she and her partners had “an insurmountable difference of opinion regarding long-term strategy” and that she wants “to do some projects that are materially riskier and more experimental than Dead Horse’s existing properties.”)

Last month, Dealbreaker.com posted marketing materials of a hedge fund called Solengo Capital. Solengo Capital, in turn, filed a lawsuit and sought a temporary restraining order against Spiers and Dealbreaker, which eventually took the offending post down.

Spiers’ backers — The Week president Justin Smith and Logicworks CEO Carter Burden — couldnt’ve been terribly happy — no one likes a lawsuit. But — and we’re just guessing here — Dealbreaker’s irreverent response to the Solengo imbroglio (one post was entitled “Solengo’s Lawyers Strike Back: We Still Say Suck It.“) could’ve driven Smith and Burden to the brink, and potentially exacerbated the brewing difference of opinion between Spiers and her money men.

We e-mailed Spiers for comment and have yet to hear back. Smith did not return a phone call seeking comment.

Justin Smith and The Week, the Dennis Publications title not currently for sale, is celebrating the upcoming Earth Week with a special online-only issue — sponsored by Lexus — focusing on “green” issues.

Although the magazine was not going to be printed anyway — it publishes 48 issues a year and was slated for a week off — marketing materials point out the bonus issue’s reduced environmental impact.

The cost of the sponsorship is estimated at over $500,000, according to the New York Times.

As we’ve been pointing out for over a year now, going green is the new “black” for media companies, particularly magazines. Every day, it seems, another green media initative is launched. Today, there were two: the Discovery Channel announced that it will rebrand its Discovery Home channel as something aligned with its “PlanetGreen” project.

TRENDY/GREEN COVERAGE: