• by March 22, 2004

THE SKELETON'S IN STEVE KING'S CLOSET - Don't expect newly anointed Zenith Optimedia chief Steve King to relocate the media buying giant's worldwide headquarters to New York any time soon. In keeping with Zenith's roots, the company will remain in London. But the Riff can't help wondering if the reason has more to do with a horrible experience King had while working for Zenith in New York, than it does with any other real estate issues. It seems that during the mid-1990s when King served as COO of Zenith North America and was working in its Houston Street offices in Lower Manhattan, he would mistakenly receive mail from another Steve King. "Penguin Books, was in the same building, and at the time they were publishing some of Stephen King's books," recalls Zenith's King. "Most of my mail when I was general manager and COO of Zenith came from strange people sending in the weirdest letters, like, 'Would you like me to tell you my story about how I butchered my husband and have him buried in my basement?"

ETHICALLY CHALLENGED - Without getting into details that everybody knows anyway, American journalism seems to be having more trouble with trust than any time in recent memory. According to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, more than 350 editors said in a survey that they had either talked to their staffs or with readers or both since the scandals became public. According to a story in today's New York Times, 51 percent of editors published columns about ethics and at least 21 percent said they implemented some new policy.

"Every editor now has to worry about this," one editor told The Times.

With all due respect to a journalist who is obviously trying very hard to deal with the fallout from the Jayson Blair incident at The Times and a host of other events, that's still a hard answer to stomach: Every editor "now" has to worry. The Riff thinks that while it seems like discussions about ethics seem to come and go, this is different: Every editor has an "it CAN happen here" mentality. No doubt it should have been considered before ... all the time.