It is remarkable how much certainty there is in the world. For instance, consider the conventional wisdom of Jill Abramson's sudden departure from "The New York Times": Abramson was fired because there is a gender double standard that rewards tyrannical men and punishes "brusque" women. The first three words of the sentence are true. So are the last 14. The one word that may not be true -- and I certainly don't know -- is "because."

It would be pointless to gather the CEOS of Publicis and Omnicom to discuss their broken engagement, or their chief competitor at WPP. Why go through the nuisance of getting them in the same room if they can't be trusted to say what they are really thinking? So I offer an exclusive interview with John Wren and Maurice Levy -- plus one special-guest knight -- conducted without, technically, "speaking to them."

In the annual ritual of news organizations hosting celebrities and government officials for a let-your-hair-down evening of entertainment and self-importance, it was super fun to see which journalists were passing the butter to which Hollywood stars and senior officials who otherwise wouldn't give them the time of day.

Sometimes, due to boastfulness or inattention or just plain guilelessness, the truth just slips out. Such as when Chad Gallagher, director of mobile at AOL Platforms, informed InformationWeek about the allure of native advertising, freely acknowledging the ethical -- and we hope soon illegal -- tactic of camouflaging advertising to look like editorial. Not sure what brought out this rare burst of candor from a publishing executive. For once, however, someone called a thing by its name.

It is spring, when a man's fancies turn to media and marketing. Tra la. So much to be fascinated about. So let's start by talking about heroin dealers and Facebook. Same thing. They both give you a free taste till you're hooked.

When people talk about the dystopian aspects of the Internet, they get it all wrong. Identity theft? Big deal. Cyberbullying? Pfft. Hate speech, snooping, piracy, porn? Bring it on. What we need to eradicate is the emailed press release.

In a few days, my new Persol sunglasses will arrive. They are merely obscenely expensive -- as opposed to immorally expensive -- because I shopped for them very hard. It was an expedition across the Internet, touching down in five countries on three continents and focusing on at least five of the brand's 100-plus styles. Let's just say it was an experience that will never leave me. No. Really...never. Because everyplace I go on the World Wide Web, the sunglasses are following me.

Somehow HBO and AMC -- and now other cable channels -- have exorcised the Demons of Closure. They subscribe to a narrative arc, not a fever chart, and permit audiences to view television in chapters that may not themselves be discrete, unified tales with a beginning, middle or an end. Which is why those shows have more than created a new Golden Age of television. They have created an altogether new form, vastly superior to everything that came before.

Not only is FunnyorDie a media company that sells advertising against socially generated page views, it is a production company/studio that makes comedies for cable -- but with a major differentiating benefit. "When we go to sell a TV show," says CEO Dick Glover, "we're not just selling a production company, We're selling all the assets of our company -- which includes 8 million Twitter followers, number one comedy brand on Twitter; which includes 5.6 mm Facebook likes, Tumblr Followers, Google+ followers etc etc etc." Social media are not merely an advantage on streaming media; they are its oxygen.

Streaming video doesn't depend on cigar-chomping tyrants, taste-sensing dowsers or even the volumes of Simmons demographic indexes that for so long were the tools plumbing the consumer mind. Turns out that Reed Hastings' magical algorithm is handy not just for predicting what movies in its acquisitions library you are most likely to enjoy, it can deduce what new production might be just the ticket, too. Amazon Studios also has the benefit of collaborative filtering -- it not only crunches the numbers to deduce demand, it crowdsources both content and feedback at every stage of development.