Will Kasich Call on New Majority With Media in Tow?

Could be pretty impressive timing for New Majority on its next interview session for campaign 2016, especially if Ohio Gov. John Kasich impresses in the GOP debate slated for Sept. 16 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley. Kasich is due to meet with New Majority on Sept. 17—and he might just have a trail of news crews in tow if he does well the night before … Heard on the patio at Il Fornaio: New Majority’s ranks are up by about a third this year, with membership at 130 or so … Notable in the wake of last week’s ouster of Austin Beutner as publisher of the L.A. Times and San Diego Union-Tribune: the OC Register’s Rich Mirman —not quite a year into the top post there and at the Press-Enterprise in Riverside—is now just about the dean of the publisher corps for metro dailies in Southern California. He can make the claim south of the San Fernando Valley, where Ron Hasse has held the publisher’s title for the Los Angeles News Group’s 9 dailies for a bit more than two years now. Mirman can pull rank of sorts on Hasse, though—the Register’s press handles printing chores for 6 of LANG’s newspapers on a contract basis …Our own Richard Reisman can lay claim to the dean’s title in his neck of the Southern California media landscape, with his 25th anniversary as publisher now in the record books …Reisman’s first hire here, Rick Reiff, also is celebrating a quarter century in OC and with the Business Journal. Reisman and Reiff teamed up to establish the OCBJ as a publication with some real chops in the 1990s. Reiff gave up the editor’s post and invented this column over the course of the next decade, and he remains on the team as editor at large alongside his growing on-air role at PBS SoCal … Word on the street also has Reiff among an eclectic list of 25 honorees who will be celebrated by the Orange County Forum as part of its—you guessed it—25th anniversary luncheon at the Hilton Irvine on October 15. Reiff is among the roster of “inspirational individuals who have impacted the progress and success of Orange County and the Orange County Forum.” The group has former Governor Pete Wilson lined up as a guest for the event …Props to a number of local colleges and universities on the latest U.S. News & World Report rankings (see Addendum item, page 16). UCI’s law school, meanwhile, continues to impress on the “scholarly impact ratings” by Gregory Sisk at the University of St. Thomas School of Law. The ratings crunch the numbers of citations to scholarship by tenured faculty members at law schools nationwide—instances where an academic from another institution refers to a professor’s work in a published piece. UCI ranked 6th, just behind Stanford and leapfrogging Columbia to move up a spot from last year … From the academic to the practical: Check out the Embassy Suites at Dyer Road and the 55 Freeway in Santa Ana for a prime example of an effective paint job. The new color scheme emphasizes the 3-D aspect of the establishment’s front face, which now presents itself with some real pop to northbound freeway traffic.