Code and Theory is an interactive agency behind websites like “The Verge,” and “Interview” magazine. They also have an odd fondness for the Dewey Decimal System.

Managing partners Steve Baer and Mike Treff took the mediabistroTV crew on an Olde Timey New York meets modern design tour of their fifth floor offices at the corner of Broadway and Prince. The guys showed how they added wide open spaces, planned randomness and hip wood floors to the windows, the wood and the brick that originally came with the building built by the Astor family in 1886. Then there were the books, the many, many, many books.

You can view our other MediabistroTV productions on our YouTube Channel.

When The New York Times Company decided to put The Boston Globe up for sale, the list of rumored buyers almost immediately ballooned to about 700. Now, according to the Globe, that list has dwindled to seven.

With the June 27 deadline to submit offers looming, the following groups have emerged as likely buyers:

• Jack Griffin and two members of the Taylor family
• Former Globe president Rick Daniels and Heb Ryan
• The Kraft Group, owner of the New England Patriots
• Revolution Capital Group, a LA-based private equity firm
• Najafi Cos., owners of the Phoenix Suns
• Douglas Manchester, owner of the U-T San Diego
• John J. Gormally Jr., Gormally Broadcasting

The Times company is looking to sell its New England Media Group, which includes the Globe and its web presence, but also The Worcester Telegram & Gazette and its site, the Globe’s direct mail business, and an almost 50 percent ownership of Metro Boston.

The Times bought the Globe in 1993 for $1.1 billion. The offers from the buyers listed above are expected to range between $70 and $120 million. That’s uh, close!

[Image: Newseum]

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Michael Hastings, Rolling Stone Contributor, Dead at 33 (Rolling Stone)
Michael Hastings, the fearless journalist whose reporting brought down the career of General Stanley McChrystal, has died in a car accident in Los Angeles, Rolling Stone has learned. He was 33. Hastings’ unvarnished 2010 profile of McChrystal in the pages of Rolling Stone, “The Runaway General,” captured the then-supreme commander of the U.S.-led war effort in Afghanistan openly mocking his civilian commanders in the White House. The maelstrom sparked by its publication concluded with President Obama recalling McChrystal to Washington and the general resigning his post. BuzzFeed We are shocked and devastated by the news that Hastings is gone. He was a great, fearless journalist with an incredible instinct for the story, and a gift for finding ways to make his readers care about anything he covered from wars to politicians. BuzzFeed / Ben Smith Hastings was really only interested in writing stories someone didn’t want him to write — often his subjects; occasionally his editor. While there is no template for a great reporter, he was one for reasons that were intrinsic to who he was: ambitious, skeptical of power and conventional wisdom, and incredibly brave. And he was warm and honest in a way that left him many unlikely friends among people you’d expect to hate him. Slate / Weigel As one of the journalists who was lucky to know him, first admiring his work as a reader, then thinking “Oh thank God” whenever we reconnected on the 2012 campaign trail, I’m having trouble working through the pathetic injustice of this situation. GalleyCat Hastings was the author of The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan and I Lost My Love in Baghdad. NY Mag / Daily Intelligencer “A lot of people in the news business want to seem unafraid,” Rachel Maddow said on her show. “Hastings was actually unafraid. To the point where he radiated a sort of energy that made you realize he was unafraid, and it made you treat him differently than other people in the business.” Read more

AgencySpy: Pizza Hut has launched an ad agency review. Unfortunately, a food review has yet to be discussed.

LostRemote: Viggle now has three million users. Of those, 2,999,879 don’t exactly know why they signed up.

UnBeige: Your tax dollars at work — a vacuum cleaner showdown is about to take place in Chicago’s district court.

As first reported by TheWrap’s Lucas Shaw, Shira Lazar and business partner Damon Berger have taken a giant leap forward. Their weekday Web TV show venture What’s Trending is now partly owned by Bedrocket Media Ventures in exchange for a capital influx in the low seven-figure range.

Since Bedrocket is located right here in Lower Manhattan, on Broadway, FishbowlNY decided to check in with “disruptive media firm” founder-CEO Brian Bedol to find out how the Lazar deal came about. “I think I originally met Shira and Damon at VidCon last year [in Anaheim],” he explains. “I had been aware of What’s Trending, but didn’t know them.”

“It was one of those things that just started really as a conversation, where they invited me to have a drink and were just picking my brain a little bit on what they were doing,” Bedol continues. “They were beginning to look for capital to grow, and I really liked the way they approached the business and the way they thought. As I was trying to help with with a little advice, I began to think it would be a good partnership for Bedrocket.”

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GQ’s latest issue features Drake as its cover dude. Knowing that former actress, current oddball Amanda Bynes has at times called Drake ugly, GQ decided to let Bynes know that her man was gracing the cover, so they tweeted the following:

Hey @AmandaBynes, we made this cover just for you: http://t.co/C8Z3MxoKq4 pic.twitter.com/JdmHqqpbL1

— GQ Magazine (@GQMagazine) June 18, 2013

Bynes noticed, and thanked them:

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Ever read an article on how to mash potatoes or fix your toilet? Chances are, if you’ve typed anything in Google search starting with “how to” or “what to do when,” you’ve read articles written by content farmers, freelance writers who work for sites like eHow and Livestrong.com.

In the latest Mediabistro AvantGuild feature, a former Demand Media writer tells what it’s really like toiling on the content farm. On a typical day, she writes, she’d find assignments ranging from “the serious to the completely inane.”

There were usually plenty of writeable titles to choose from, but occasionally I’d come across a dud like “How to Furnish a Giraffe” or “20 Benefits of a 3CQ On the JLRM36.” There were also a thousand iterations of the same article: “How to Dye Your Hair Pink,” “Best Pink Hair Color for Brunettes” or “How to Change Your Hair from Blonde to Pink.” Sometimes these redundancies were beneficial, because I could use the same resources for multiple articles and save time on research. At others, the droning nature of this process made me wonder, “What am I doing?”

For more, read My Year as a Content Farm Writer.

The full version of this article is exclusively available to Mediabistro AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, register now for as little as $55 a year for access to hundreds of articles like this one, discounts on Mediabistro seminars and workshops, and all sorts of other bonuses.

– Sherry Yuan

Capital New York is getting into the e-book game with Making The City. The book is a selection of features from the site’s last three years, so there’s plenty worth reading from writers such as Tom McGeveran (co-founder of Capital New York) Joe Pompeo, Starlee Kine, Azi Paybarah, Sheila O’Malley and Steven Boone.

Making The City is available on Amazon or iTunes, for only $4.99. Why not show some love for New York writers and buy a copy?

If you’re around on July 2, there’ll be a book release party at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe. Have a few bourbons beforehand and then say something creepy to the Capital New York writer you like the best. Kidding! Please don’t do that.

The Brandon Holley era at Lucky is over. Eva Chen has been named the new editor-in-chief of the magazine, thus officially ending Holley’s three-year run.

Holley was a veteran of Condé Nast. She was a senior editor at GQ from 1998 to 2000 and served as editor-in-chief of Jane, from 2005 to 2007. She came to Lucky in 2010. Holley told Mediabistro that as editor, she wanted to do right by its readers. “I’ve been talking to a lot of women,” she explained. “They love this magazine. So it’s my job just to bring my take to it. It’s not about scrapping it. It’s a really great magazine and women really do love it. And I’m going to bring my angle.”

Holley, according to Condé Nast, is now leaving the company. We’ve reached out to Condé for further comment, and we’ll update when we hear back.

Chen has been serving as a consultant for Lucky, working closely with Anna Wintour. So it’s of little surprise that Wintour was pleased with the move. In a statement, Wintour called Chen “The quintessential Lucky girl.”