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.”

Read more

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:

Read more

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.”

The farewell party started May 31 in the form of Lisa de Moraes‘ final live chat at washingtonpost.com. Today, her next journalism home has been officially heralded by Nikki Finke and Deadline TV editor Nellie Andreeva. She will be the site’s TV columnist:

“Lisa is one of the most respected and colorful voices in television coverage today,” said Andreeva. “I’ve enjoyed her work as a fan for years, now I’m happy to have her as a colleague at Deadline.”

Added Finke: “I can’t remember when I didn’t read Lisa. Her columns cover everything from morning shows to reality programs to executive suites with exclusive news and irreverence. I’m thrilled she decided to make Deadline her Hollywood home.”

Read more

There is probably no one who feels worse right now in all of New York than Tommy Flynn. In an exclusive News 4 report by government affairs reporter Melissa Russo, the stone-cutter and engraver takes full responsibility for inverting the birth year of New York’s beloved former mayor. Instead of 1924, the inscription on the gravestone Flynn worked on for eight months with Ed Koch reads 1942.

Read more

Kai Eiselein, a photographer, is suing BuzzFeed because he claims the site used his photograph of a girl heading a soccer ball without his permission. PaidContent reports that Eiselein is suing for copyright infringement, and wants $3.6 million in damages.

The photo that originated on Eiselein’s Flickr account was published by BuzzFeed and included in “The 30 Funniest Header Faces.” Eiselein’s lawsuit was filed in New York this month. Court documents show that Eiselein wants BuzzFeed to pay up because the site encourages people to share images (and everything else). “BuzzFeed, Inc actively encourages its users to share content, regardless of whether or not that content is owned by, or licensed to, Buzzfeed,” explains the filing.

While your FishbowlNY editors aren’t lawyers, we do like to recite lines from A Few Good Men, so here’s our take on this: It’s unlikely that Eiselein will win. Copyright laws are too ambiguous when it comes to fair use, which is what BuzzFeed will claim. If this goes to court, and someone asks a BuzzFeed editor if he used Eiselein’s soccer photo, we imagine the editor will scream, “You’re goddamn right I did.”

It’s not all bad, Angelina Jolie body double lawsuit news this week for media titan Rupert Murdoch. Stony Brook University’s School of Journalism has revealed a most generous endowment from the News Corporation chief.

The $50,000 gift will go towards a new department of the school named after Sunday Times foreign correspondent Marie Colvin, who was killed in Syria in February, 2012. From the official announcement:

Mr. Murdoch’s donation will help to expand the Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting’s overseas program, Journalism Without Walls, which has already sent student journalists to Russia, Cuba, China and Kenya.

“Marie was an outstanding foreign correspondent who risked her life to tell Sunday Times readers what was really going on in war zones across the globe,” said Mr. Murdoch. “She stood in the finest tradition of war reporters and News Corp.’s donation will help train the next generation so they too can bear witness.”

Read more