Chatterbox

Bouquets and chocolates are still streaming into KCBS from the mayor and the Board of Supervisors in thanks for the station's cost-cutting decision that has reduced ace City Hall reporter Barbara Taylor to four days a week on the beat. On the fifth day, Taylor now anchors the Sunday newscasts, a most excellent use of her news-breaking talents. ... One of the rites of passage for new employees at Wired and HotWired is founder/publisher/editor/visionary Louis Rossetto's "Creation Myth," in which the technology guru summons his new charges into a meeting room and over the course of an hour-and-a-half describes how the inexorable march of history gave rise to his magazine. The "Creation Myth" orations are said to be as inviting as a "church lock-in," in which junior high students are promised fun and games in the gym but then impounded for hours while the youth minister proselytizes. Rossetto, who adores the music of his own voice as much as any editor, presents the Wired saga as the triumph of his and partner/company president Jane Metcalfe's "vision" over the fuddy-duddies at Murdoch's News Corp., Time Warner, and Hearst. The guru's telling of the Wired success story is every bit as fascinating as the story itself, especially when he proclaims that what the magazine/Website needs now is a chief cultural officer sitting next to its chief financial officer. If and when that appointment is made, we will be happy to lend the incoming executive a little red book from the Chatterbox library. ... Watch the newsstands at the end of April for City Magazine, which Co-Editor/Co-Publisher Lauren Tamara describes as a glossy quarterly guide to San Francisco living, arts, and dining, with a special emphasis on film.