Honoree of the Week: Jamie Dimon for Thirteen/WNET

Yesterday we posited that there is a lot of good that could come out of the current difficulty organizations are having securing honorees, to the extent that it will reduce the reliance on honorees to actually raise the money. But we also think the organizations with the best "get" in the honoree department, not to mention those that have have agreed to the task, deserve our attention.

So this week the Out & About honoree honor goes to... Thirteen/WNET, for securing the chief executive and chairman of JPMorgan Chase & Co., Jamie Dimon -- yes, that's right, a real, live, honorable banker -- as honoree at its annual gala tonight at Gotham Hall. Mr. Dimon shares the honoree bill with conservation advocate Meredith Brokaw and actor Kevin Kline.

At a time when corporate philanthropy seems jeopardized, tonight Mr. Dimon will be upholding philanthropic traditions at the once separate entities his company now constitutes, including Chase (where David Rockefeller created the ethos for New York corporate philanthropy in the first place), JPMorgan, and Bear Stearns.

Mr. Dimon's company has been a longtime supporter of Thirteen, but that's not the only reason why this match seems marvelous. While the banks are getting government bailouts, public broadcasting is struggling with reduced government, corporate, and individual support. The bottom line is Thirteen is desperate to raise money right now, as the current on-air plea from its vice president of institutional advancement, Barbara Bantivoglio, makes clear. It's a plea that comes after several months of the president of Thirteen, Neal Shapiro, making his own addresses to viewers to lobby lawmakers against a 50% cut in funding from New York State; in the end, the budget cut was reduced to 20%. Now, it seems, Mr. Shapiro's calm confidence has been deemed too calm to get viewers to take out their checkbooks.

Suffice it to say that this is the time for a high profile business executive, such as Jamie Dimon, to step up to the plate and set an example that engaging in the gala circuit in a highly visible and meaningful way is not an excess but a decent and acceptable part of corporate responsibility.

Thirteen is particularly deserving. Despite funding pressures, budget cuts, staff cuts, New York's public broadcasting station has been proving its value as a cultural resource in the downturn -- a viewpoint I assert with the full disclosure that I worked as a freelance correspondent for Thirteen in December. Some of the examples of its quality programming: the spectacular Masterpiece Classic miniseries "Little Dorrit," which struck nerves with a character so similar to Bernard Madoff, courtesy of Charles Dickens; the recession-friendly Saturday night movie line-up, "Reel 13"; the interview show with Andrew Ross Sorkin, "It's the Economy, NY," and another new series, "Live From the Artist's Den," which is the first show we can remember directly appealing to a 20s and 30s-something demographic on public television.

So we look forward to hearing a loud round of applause for Mr. Dimon, not to mention the announcement of some big dollar amounts raised tonight for Thirteen.