As you may have heard, Gawker was recently named the blog of the decade by Adweek, which proclaimed it “the template for what a blog should be.” Leaving aside the question of “should,” Gawker has set the template for what the blogs of this decade aspire to be. Gawker Media was founded in 2002. In those seven years, its founder Nick Denton has built an empire, and forever changed the game, how it’s played — and who gets to play it.

We’ve noted a few times in passing on this blog that it sometimes feels like the Gawker websites are determining how media will look online going forward. But today it looks like Gawker is taking one step closer to the mainstream, or at least how the mainstream used to look. Gawker head Nick Denton explains.

After Harry Potter’s worldwide record-breaking weekend, we got to talking about certain parallels between the magical land of Hogwarts and the equally magical land of headlines, bylines, cutlines, chyrons, blog pickup and declining ad pages. Turns out, the two have a lot in common!

On that note, for your edification and enjoyment, we present our own version – let’s call it “Harry Potter and the Media Muggles.”

Yesterday, we wondered about the future of advertising, and acknowledged that bloggers face a new predicament of impossibly low rates. But there are other technological pitfalls — just ask Gawker Media, who was scammed by a client pretending to be Suzuki into running ads that crashed readers’ browsers and even installed malware onto their systems.

As online writing becomes increasingly a part of the mainstream dialogue in America, “blogger” is no longer a dirty word. Some of the best writers of our time operate exclusively on the internet, but some of the most talented still work under the radar. In this in-depth, magazine-length feature, Mediaite has assembled a list of 25 of the best underappreciated bloggers and explained why they matter.

Business Insider announced Friday that they had “alleged proof” that the Balloon Boy story was a hoax after being contacted by a “Denver-area student who claims to have worked with Falcon’s father.” The student wanted to sell his story for $5-8000. Apparently Gawker jumped at the offer, because yesterday they published their own exclusive. So how much did Gawker pay for the exclusive?

Slate.com chairman Jacob Weisberg’s thinks the biggest challenge Gawker’s now faces is to not morph “into the sort of journalism it often likes to ridicule.” However, we think the more likely scenario will be that the Times et al. are going to increasingly look (if not necessarily sound) like Gawker?

Today’s Gawker Media redesign unveils a new feature that attempts to optimize the loyalty of the network’s already robust fan base. Gawker Open Forums now exists on all of the group’s nine blogs, integrating social networking, crowdsourcing and standard discussion forums, leaving each blog as not only a conversation starter, but a channel where news can be broken, shared and commented on by readers, all in one place.

Gawker publisher Nick Denton twitters about the common thread linking Gawker’s recent powerhouse posts. Perhaps the updated adage should be: a picture’s worth a thousand words, a million clicks, and lots of ad dollars. Also, in at least one case, a million dollar lawsuit.

TMZ.com is reporting that Eric Dane and Rebecca Gayheart have filed a $1 million lawsuit in a Los Angeles court against Gawker.com over the much-clicked upon sex-tape the website posted of the two (plus former beauty queen Kari Ann Peniche!) last month.

Actually this isn’t the first time Gawker has been sued for posting a sex tape.

Have you seen Gawker’s ‘McSteamy, His Wife and a Fallen Beauty Queen’s Naked Threesome‘ sex video yet? The post, which went up yesterday afternoon has currently clocked 1,375,051 views. It’s Gawker’s most-viewed post this year. Last month Nick Denton reinstated traffic bonuses. So who’s cashing in?

At the end of last week, Washington Post reporter Ian Shapira wrote a profile of a niche consultant — a “generational guru” — who teaches clients to communicate with members of different generations. Later that day, Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan picked up the story, snarked it down, added a few links — one at the top, one at the bottom — and posted it. Business as usual, right? Wrong.

Last fall, after laying off 19 employees, Gawker head Nick Denton predicted the end of media as we know it! Turns out Denton may have overstated matters, at least where Gawker is concerned. So what’s Gawker doing with all the extra revenue. Whatever it is, it does not involve hiring Bonnie Fuller.

Gawker stepped over the line with their Bloodcopy campaign, where they were not only guilty of blurring the line between advertisements and editorial but of nearly erasing it altogether. And yet, the entire controversy made Bloodcopy one of the most successful ad campaigns Gawker ever ran.

In an interview with Nieman Journalism Lab trailblazing ‘bad boy’ Nick Denton said that Gawker Media’s recent return to page view pay opens the door for “checkbook journalism.” Meaning? If you send Gawker a tip that gets picked up in a big way, you get a cut of the ad revenue.

A quick glance at our Twitter feed yesterday revealed that Gawker’s Nick Denton was a panelist at this year’s Apsen Institute Ideas Festival. It was a double glance actually — Nick Denton and the old guard Aspen Institute are not the likeliest of bedfellows. Topic? The death of media, naturally!