• by December 11, 2003

YES, VIRGINIA, THERE IS A SPAMMER CLAUSE - The ink is barely dry on the state's new spam law, but Virginia authorities have wasted little time enforcing it. Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore Thursday said a North Carolina man has been arrested on four counts of using fraudulent means to transmit spam. Under Virginia law, the offenses carry penalties of one to five years in prison for each count. And why is Virginia being so tough? Could it be that law enforcement authorities have had their inbox's flooded one to many times? The Riff thinks it's more likely that it's because the state is home to two of the largest Internet service providers, AOL and MCI, and accounts for roughly half of the world's Internet traffic.

WE HAD NO IDEA THERE WERE THAT MANY METROSEXUALS TO GO AROUND -- Boy, the Riff is sure feeling out of it again. We only just recently realized that Abercrombie & Fitch published a consumer magazine and now we learn that it is folding it. Thank goodness equally hip and ever-more-so-PC retailer Benetton still publishes its Colors magazine. Even better, they've recently hired one of the Riff's favorite editors, Spymaster Kurt Anderson, to run it. Okay, so we knew that, but what's all this talk about dueling fashion mags aimed at men - and both of them being published by Conde Nast, to boot. Even before it launches its long-awaited Cargo bi-monthly (and we do mean bi), Si's house says it's also spinning off Vitals, a section in Conde Nast's Details magazine that advises men on the art of shopping (think Lucky for men). Vitals' signs will start pumping with a September 2004 issue, while Cargo is set for a March 2004 launch.

A BROWNOUT THAT COULD CAUSE SOME RED FACES - Despite the enormous growth of the nation's Latino community, Latinos continued to be marginalized on the evening newscasts of ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC in 2002, according to the Network Brownout Report. The eighth annual study, released today by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists found that out of approximately 16,000 stories that aired in 2002, only 120 -- less than 1 percent (0.75) -- were about Latinos. In 2001, only 99 stories (0.62 percent) were about Latinos. Hispanics now make up more than 13 percent of the nation's population. Even worse than being ignored, the study found that when network news stories focus on Latinos, they are disproportionately negative. This year's study found that two-thirds of all Latino-related stories that aired on the network news were about crime, terrorism and illegal immigration. There were 47 stories alone dealing with Latinos as either perpetrators or victims of crime. Of those crime stories, more than half were about kidnapping. The kidnapping and murder of five-year-old Samantha Runnion (18 stories) in California, and the subsequent arrest of Alejandro Avila for the crime, dominated that coverage.