I read Jeff Koyen’s post The world’s 10 worst cruises yesterday with a sense of superiority and snark.  Who would go on an Adventures in Parrotdise Cruise? Or a Float2Paradise Psychic Medium Cruise?  Do I even know anyone who knows anyone who would go?   The only possible reason I could fathom dramamine-ing up for ShipRocked or Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Simple Man Cruise would be to cover it for a story.

Except… late at night,  as I was waiting for the Beta day adrenaline to dissipate,  my mind wandered.   Jeff identified the top 10 plus several more of these wacky theme cruises.  Clearly, people are going.  It must be a lot of people, making lots of money for the cruise lines, or there wouldn’t be so many of them.

And that’s when it hit me: a True/Slant News Cruise

Before you scoff and smirk, let me explain.  We’re a new business in a tough economy.  We know it’ll take a while for the advertising market to bounce back, so it makes sense to look at other revenue opportunities.  If James Carville and Mary Matalin can do it, why can’t we?

Here’s how it would work:

* Our 100+ contributors would be on board.  They would sit with passengers during meals and chat and be generally sociable.  Except for Taibbi.  We’ll exempt him from this part.

* We’ll set up discussions on various news topics, featuring our contributors.  We’ll also set up some debates.  Rick Ungar will argue with everyone.

* We’ll have News Tech 101 sessions, where we teach people how to find news on the Internet and their mobile devices, how to use Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds, etc.

* We’ll have some special cooking seminars with Robin Dorian, Mike Hess and Susan Toepfer.

* At night, we’ll have a T/S Jam Session.  After all, we have some real-live musicians on the site.  Rozzo, Knowles and Carlozo, start working on the set list now.

These are just initial thoughts, but you can see the potential.

I’ll get to work on the business plan.  Who’s in, and what’re you bringing to the (floating) table?