Good evening, 919 Gang. We’re taking
off for a few days. I plan to file again Thursday night (March 5).
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HAL FUSON writes:
The
other day, Preston Turegano mentioned my name in connection with his query
about why the Union-Tribune didn’t bear any indication of the name of its
corporate owner. The short answer is that there’s no requirement there be such
an indication.
It
is a good idea to post a copyright notice in the name of a legal entity
(although not a necessity under current copyright law), which, as Preston
notes, the U-T does on its masthead in the name of The San Diego Union-Tribune,
LLC. The LLC presumably is a legal entity and the U-T is likely one of its
assets (perhaps its only asset). The LLC in turn may be an asset of The
California Times. Or not. Or even a personal asset of Dr. Soon-Shiong, although
things are probably much more complicated than that.
There
once was a corporate entity called Union-Tribune Publishing Co., but it rarely,
if ever, had any assets. The real U-T, as opposed to the empty corporate
entity, was during my time merely an unincorporated “operating unit” of The
Copley Press, Inc. I don’t think “Copley Newspapers” ever had any existence
either, except as a registered trademark.
So,
Preston, if you want to start up a newspaper, go ahead. You don’t have to put
your name on it. There is an “unless”, of course, and it goes like this.
If
you want to take advantage of the cheaper USPS “periodical rates” (used to be
called "second class," but nobody admits to being less than “first
class” today) you have to apply for a permit available to publications that
meet certain requirements, including publication of a notice that identifies
ownership."
I’m
looking at the New Yorker’s notice from page 94 of its May 20, 2019 issue (I
think you only have to publish it once a year) and it identifies the owner as
“Conde Nast, which is a division of Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc.” One nice
touch is the name of the general counsel, Fabio Bertoni, who happens to be a
Columbia J School grad. “Advance,” by the way, is derived from the name of The
Staten Island Advance, the newspaper that S.I. Newhouse acquired in 1922 and
his family still publishes. There’s lots of other stuff in the notice, names of
many officers, their Boone, Iowa address to which you should direct any
questions about your subscription, and a number you can call for permission to
reprint covers. Not all of it is required by the Postal Service rules,
including this in all caps: THE NEW YORKER IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE RETURN OR
LOSS OF, OR FOR DAMAGE OR ANY OTHER INJURY TO, UNSOLICITED MANUSCRIPTS, BLAH,
BLAH, BLAH…
All
of the above, of course, is subject to my standard disclaimer: LEGAL ADVICE IS
WORTH WHAT YOU PAY FOR IT.
REBER:
Hal mentioned “periodical rates.” There was a time, long, long ago, when a paper
could mail its product to other newspapers and pay no postage. Want to build
circulation? Mail out a thousand unsolicited unpaid-for papers around the
country. Many publishers welcomed them because they could copy items to print
in their own papers. The down side, of course, was having stacks of out-of-town
newspapers hiding the carpet.
PRESTON
TUREGANO writes:
Sent to me by a former U-T colleague: Here’s
what the LA Times said in December about The California Times. Somehow I missed
it…
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JOHN MARTIN writes:
A
wonderful new exhibit at New York’s Whitney Museum covers Mexican artists
(Diego Rivera and others) and their influence between 1920 and 1945 on American
artists (Jackson Pollack and others). One American artist, Everett Gee Jackson,
is described as Texas-born and a San Diego resident at his passing in the mid
1990s. Was he Eileen Jackson’s husband by chance?
As a
copy editor in the Union society section for a couple of semesters in the
1950s, I marveled at how she seemed connected to many sections of the town.
REBER: Yes, they were married. Aileen got her start here in Ramona. The
story goes that she walked into the Sentinel office and asked the editor why he
didn’t have a society column. He said there was no one to write it. Aileen volunteered
for the job and a star was born. I don’t recall her age when this happened. Maybe
10 or 12. No older.
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DAVID GADDIS SMITH writes:
Just three days after Louise and I attended a
concert that featured a 1940 cantata about lynching, the House of
Representatives voted 410-4 Wednesday to make
lynching a federal hate crime. The cantata, “And They Lynched Him on a Tree,”
was written by African-American composer William Grant Still, and its
performance to a full house at the Downtown Abbey in National City by members
of the MLK Jr. Community Choir San Diego and others had me in tears. The choir
is directed by Ken Anderson, who has raised 11 foster children; when he started
raising these boys, my wife, who then was employed with a foster care agency,
worked closely with him. She and Anderson had a nice reunion before the
performance — they had not seen each other for 25 years. Beth Wood did a preview of the concert for
the U-T, but I had already bought my tickets by then after having read about it
in the La Jolla Village News, as it was also
performed at St. James by-the-Sea Episcopal Church on Feb. 22.
It is amazing
how things change. The pastor who narrated the cantata, Michael Henderson of
PEK/Good Shepherd United AME in Lemon Grove, was sitting next to us before he
went to change for his performance. While he was sitting with us he was wearing
a button with the year 1619 – the year slaves were first brought to Jamestown,
Virginia. I was surprised to see on the internet that you can now buy T-shirts
such as the one pictured here that features the year in Pan-African colors. Has
anyone else heard of this trend? I wonder whether Historic Jamestowne at
Colonial National Historical Park (which I once reported on for the Newport
News Daily Press) will start selling such items.
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HANNAH HUI WONG write:
All
those "burgs." My family and I lived Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania,for
three years. Mechanicsburg, located west of Harrisburg, just across the
Susquehanna River, was founded by mechanics, so every New Year's Eve there is a
wrench drop at midnight. (Dillsburg, a neighboring town, drops a pickle.) I
have added a small wrench as a Christmas ornament, marking the years we lived
there. We also learned some Pennsylvania-Dutch traditions. One New Year's, we
were invited to a brunch and the main dish was pork and sauerkraut. I also
remember a week before Lent, the local supermarkets sold fasnacht for Shrove
Tuesday. Good times for us in central PA.
REBER:
Hannah, the rule is: if it’s a burg, it’s a town. If it’s a berg, it’s a
mountain. And if it’s a bug you step on it.
DANA
WILKIE writes:
Really interesting intel about Rebersburg,
Jack. You wrote that " The original Reber homestead is under a
reservoir, but part of the property is still in Reber hands, and the mansion on
it has been visited by JFK and other celebrities."
Any photos of that mansion? And why
would it have been visited by JFK and other celebrities?
REBER: I don’t have photos. I drove (across Rebers Bridge) past the gate,
but never got inside. This, the home property since 1742, is not in Rebersberg.
It’s near Reading, I believe in Sinking Spring.
The celebrities were guests of John U.
Reber, vice president in charge of radio for the J. Walter Thompson advertising
agency. In early days, companies would tell the radio networks they wanted to
sponsor a show and the network would create the show. Reber (sometimes known as
“The Grim Reber”) complained that the networks seemed to think the radio
audience was dressed in tuxedos and evening gowns. The programs were dull, and Reber
said the ad agency could do a better job.
Reber liked Hollywood’s star system.
Hire someone the ordinary public really liked, then build a show around them.
And that’s what he did. Once hailed as “radio’s first and probably greatest
entrepreneur,” he made radio stars out of Bing Crosby, Rudy Vallee, Eddie
Cantor, Edgar Bergen and George Burns and Grace Allen. These people already
were famous, of course, and he traded on that fame by putting them on radio.
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REBER: I’m going to miss a lot of birthday parties. Happy Birthday to Thomas
K. Arnold and Molly Donavan, March 2; Sharon Jones, March 3; Valerie Alvord,
Patric Petrie and Phil LaVelle, March 4; and Karen Pearlman and Laurel Scott,
March 5.
P.O.
Box 2239
Ramona,
CA 92065-0938
United
States
