...Take the man from Manhattan but he usually returns

Gary Rivlin reporter for the New York Times is giving up the Silicon Valley beat for a dream job as a feature writer for the business section of the New York Times. Saturday night I joined him and his elite group of buddies (Markoff etc ;-) at his penthouse apartment in the heart of San Francisco's trendy Mission Street.

I, and some other volunteers, helped Gary in a valiant attempt to empty his drinks cabinet, so's he would have less to pack. It's fortunate people here are so caring, not like in New York . . .

I couldn't tell if Gary was lamenting or boasting that he might never be back in these parts again. He told me he has spent 14 years in the San Francisco area and this will be his third attempt at a return to New York city, and it feels like it will be his last.

He said the job is a dream job and the offer came just days after his return from about ten months on the New Orleans beat--one of the most challenging stories around. Good luck to Gary, I know he'll be back, but with a return ticket in his pocket, as he researches many features about the new golden age emerging in Silicon Valley :-)

...Fred Volgelstein gets Wired

I hadn't noticed that Fred Volgelstein, former Fortune senior writer is now at Wired magazine. He did flirt with the idea of leaving the tree-killing business. But a salary in the hand is better than two birds in the bush because you get to keep 50 percent of it.

[Mashup metaphor #27 :-) ]

...VCs buy a piece of PaidContent.org

The excellent PaidContent.org publication raised an undisclosed sum of funding from VC firm Greycroft Partners. I'm a huge fan of PaidContent and founder Rafat Ali has done an excellent job in reporting on the business of the media industry with scoops and exclusive interviews.

Some call PaidContent a blog, I call it a news organization covering the media industry produced by media professionals. Just as SVW is not really a blog...

But why raise money this way Rafat? There are less risky ways to do it that don't require term sheets, large lawyer fees, and someone that is not a founder owning a piece of you...

I hope you ticked the box and opted for some cashback out of the deal Rafat, it's time for a couple of weeks of languid and liquid pleasures in some exotic place after all the hard work you and the team have put into the venture.

From Journalism.co.uk

ContentNext Media, owner of new media news websites PaidContent and MocoNews, has won expansion funding.

The company has received first round investment, of an undisclosed sum, from Greycroft Partners.

Alan Patricof, a founder of Apax Partners and managing director of Greycroft, has previously financed Apple, AOL, and NTL, when those companies were in their infancy.

Backing from Greycroft could prove to be validation of blog-style news sites as a primary source of revenue.

Writing on PaidContent founder Rafat Ali said:

"Our opportunity is to take some money, organise and solidify, choose the right partners, and expand/accelerate what we're doing.

"In the end, keep our heads down and keep doing what we do best: write, report, bring the industry together to discuss and help them do business… in other words, keeping it real."

As well as hiring more backroom staff, ContentNext plans to recruit a New York-based reporter, redesign all its sites and later in the year launch a UK wing.

Also, my good buddy Andy Plesser over on Beet.tv has a vidcast interview with Rafat.

...Nice work by Warren Buffet on outsourcing his philanthropy

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Warren Buffett on Monday signed over much of his $44 billion fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, uniting the world's two richest people in a bid to fight disease, reduce poverty and improve education.

The roughly $30.7 billion donation doubles the Gates Foundation's size to $60 billion, five times larger than any other U.S. charitable group and bigger than the gross domestic product of Kuwait.

"Uniting the world's two richest people..." does the writer mean Bill and Melinda? Surely Melinda must be one of the richest people in the world and she is already united. Otherwise uniting Mr Gates and Mr Buffett provides for an uncomfortable image. And where is Bono in all of this? I bet he had a hand in it... [Did you see the Time "man (person) of the year 2005" cover? If not, here it is...]

... A summer breeze at SFMOMA

I popped into Antenna Group's very interesting clean tech salon last Wednesday.

It was a perfect summer evening in San Francisco and my meetings and events were perfectly spaced in time and geography. Melody Haller's salons are always worth a visit and the location at the Varnish Gallery was the perfect staging ground for the Matthew Barney opening reception at SFMOMA.

I managed to persuade Darcy Provo, senior exec at the Antenna Group, to join me in breaking away from anything IT or business related for an hour or so.

The Matthew Barney exhibition is challenging, provocative and defies description but these types of opening events are not about the exhibits, they are about those that exhibit themselves at such events...

The mood and the energy of the place was great and it became very enjoyable very quickly. We were soon bumping into other refugees from the Silicon Valley business/IT scene.

Michael Tchong, the noted trendwatcher, of UberCool and other ventures, was there. He told me he is soon launching a new site, trendwatching.com. I told him watching is a growing trend...I like to watch Silicon Valley.

there were encounters and conversations with others too, as we stepped around white piles of plastic forms. And before too long, Darcy had acquired a large following :-). And before too long, I was next door in the St Regis bantering away with a bunch of people I barely knew 20 minutes earlier... A perfect evening to finish a long day.