What's the dirty trick? I doubt the author is aware of it, or had anything to do with implementing it. Can you elaborate on what TNW is doing?
As far as UX goes, this is about as bad as you get to force people to view an ad.
I'm a developer and it took me a few seconds to realize what was happening. I'm fairly certain most users would go to the page, see the ad and think, "Where's the article I just clicked on?" not see it and then leave right away.
edit: just visited this from desktop – wow. That's bonkers.