Times Taps OC for Big Hire; Revenge of Mt. Rushmore?

The L.A. Times plucked its latest big hire from the OC Register’s backyard, tapping UCI grad and Monarch Beach resident Don Reis as chief revenue officer. Reis started his career pounding the pavement for auto ads for the Times-owned Daily Pilot, worked for one-time biggie Miller Freeman’s action sports publications in Laguna Beach, and was at Road & Track’s erstwhile operation in Newport Beach during its heyday, working from the office that’s now home to Kobe Inc. He went on to senior sales positions for ESPN the Magazine, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Reis plans to keep his home base in Monarch Beach but get an apartment in downtown L.A. as he comes full circle to join the new leadership team shaping up at the Times under private equity vet Austin Beutner … It was just a few weeks ago that the Business Journal took some liberties in lauding six executives as 2014 Business People of the Year, grafting visages of each onto an image of Mt. Rushmore. Seems the monument has drawn a line in the karmic sand—two of the execs the Business Journal featured will soon be largely out of the picture. Allergan boss David Pyott is set to yield his post when the company’s sale wraps up—we were aware of that when we designed the cover. Last week brought news that Oculus VR cofounder Palmer Luckey has moved to Menlo Park as his virtual reality outfit sidles up to new owner Facebook. That leaves four from our recent cover—back in line with Mt. Rushmore’s reality … Luckey might be headed in an opposite direction except for a quirk of fate, according to hedge funder Chuck Martin, who’s working on a history of business here. Martin notes that Cal Tech grad William Schockley approached OC legend Arnold Beckman back in 1955 for help on a new company. Beckman formed a subsidiary of Beckman Instruments to support what eventually became Shockley Semiconductor Labs, which boasted Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce as engineers. Shockley’s mother was aging and ill in Northern California, though, so he moved the company to be near her. Moore and Noyce went along but left within a few years to form Fairchild Semiconductor, the progenitor of Silicon Valley, and founded Intel a decade later … Luckey didn’t share the cover of the Jan. 19 issue of Forbes with anyone, by the way … Forbes also figures in our front-page report on Lu Guanqiu, the latest Chinese billionaire to make a splash in OC. Lu ranks No. 16 on Forbes’ list of the richest folks in China, with a fortune estimated at $5.4 billion. That’s more media cred for a claim of billionaire status than we ever found for Winston Chung, who hasn’t been seen around here since his bid for the Balboa Bay Club fell apart back in 2012 … Chung’s reversal left room for Dick Pickup to strike a deal for the club, its sister resort and the Newport Beach Country Club. That helped Pickup to a spot on our Mt. Rushmore, by the way … How does Tango Buenos Aires get any better? Mix in some boleadoras—something the Argentine troupe did to stunning effect during its recent visit to the Segerstrom Center … Lot of talk about Anaheim’s chance of landing Comic-Con and its annual crowd of more than 100,000 if it leaves the San Diego Convention Center in 2017. Insider’s early odds: Las Vegas: 3-2; Anaheim: 2-1; San Diego: 3-1; L.A.: 7-2.