Welcoming a new California quarterly
Will Hearst, editor and publisher of the new quarterly Alta — and chairman of the board of the Hearst Corp., which owns this newspaper — presided as patriarch at a party celebrating its birth on Thursday, Oct. 12.
The venue was the Modernism West Gallery at Foreign Cinema, and the party was crowded with the Bay Area’s literary tastemakers, including word-slingers (film scholar David Thomson and tech industry observer Julian Guthrie); editors (Berkeleyside founder Frances Dinkelspiel, Last Gasp Press founder Ron Turner); media watchers (Common Sense Media founder Jim Steyer and the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Phil Bronstein); literary event founders (the Bay Area Book Festival’s Cherilyn Parsons); booksellers (Book Passage’s Elaine and Bill Petrocelli); and allies in related fields (San Francisco International Film Festival’s Noah Cowan).
Most of those present are connoisseurs of both word-craft and cocktail parties, and there was a buzz of praise for the generous selection of charcuterie, the Alta-tini offered at the bar, and a soiree with nary a crudite in sight.
As to the new publication, Hearst, who presides over a huge corporation, seemed pleased to focus on a smaller picture.
“Every business is made out of people,” he said, likening the new enterprise to Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater, “with a writer, an editor, a photographer ... a media community.” In a short talk, Hearst cited such inspirations as Warren Hinckle, who said a publication “was no more than a blank sheet of paper and a group of people,” and Kevin Starr, who told him that there were California writers every bit as distinguished, for example, as traditional East Coast stars, Nathaniel Hawthorne and the like.
In fact, the masthead of the new magazine includes a list of those writers, artists and creative icons, headed with the name of “honorary chair” Jim Harrison. Along with John Muir, Father Junipero Serra, Mark Twain and Julia Morgan, the list includes filmmakers (Billy Wilder, John Houston and more); artists (Richard Diebenkorn, Dugald Stermer); adman Hal Riney; and inventor/tech mogul Steve Jobs.
Leaving the party, every guest was handed a goodie bag with a magazine, an Alta baseball cap, and, most cherished by most, a bottle of vodka. Off to a great start, says this Hearst Corp. employee.
Analyzing thank-yous to big-time sponsors at fundraising dinners and parties, it seems often that the most frequent corporate and individual donors are companies/people whose tarnished reputations are in need of polishing. This fall’s particular roster included one bank and one airline — their names all over the front pages and the banquet circuit — and if you look at the plaques on brick-and-mortar facilities around town, you’ll notice many names that have been in not-positive headlines in recent history.
Mostly, this is beneficial to nonprofits. Reputations can’t be entirely cleansed and no one really forgets the misdeed, but the money itself is launderable. If the bank’s going to make it possible for the needy to have access to education, that doesn’t make up for alleged frauds. But using ill-gotten gains for altruistic ends is a better use of ill-gotten gains than buying another country home for the bank president.
(Need to raise $40 million more for the tunneltop parklands near Crissy Field? Why not hit up disgraced Uber founder Travis Kalanick, who’s still on the board of Uber after stepping down as CEO in June? Reputation in need of cleansing, and besides, “Uber,” which means over, would be a fitting name on the tunnel tops.)
Joining the scoundrel lineup last week was Harvey Weinstein, brought down — fired from his own company — after multiple allegations of sexual impropriety. Weinstein had given major donations to the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaigns, and both were quick to condemn him. But condemnation — like “thoughts and prayers” — isn’t going to help anyone.
I hope development officers are springing to action.
P.S. And the experts weigh in: Thanks to “Extra” for finding just the right source to comment on a pressing issue. Ivana Trump, ex-wife of the grabber-in chief, shared with “Extra” her views on Weinstein: “I knew him from the parties. I knew him from Cannes . ... I never really liked him, he was always unshaven, unkempt, badly dressed. I really never liked him . ... I think it’s disgusting and inexcusable.”
PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING “He said, ‘Everyone wants to play the French horn, because it’s sexy.’ ” Woman to woman, overheard in Berkeley by Ken Joye