Hoge Ties

SPOTLIGHT

In Boston, I'm known as Mr. King; in Chicago, she's known as Mrs. Hoge." In New York, Jim Hoge and Sharon King are known as a pair of the brightest new social assets in town. The Adonis of newspaper management, publisher Hoge swooped in from Chicago last year, bringing star quality to the droopy Daily News. King, his wife of four years, is a veteran consumer reporter turned TV-talk-show host. "It was called Women '75, Women '76, Women '77," she says, "but when they got to Women '80 they thought it sounded too geriatric, so they named it The Sharon King Show." A native of Grand Forks, North Dakota, King has spent the past six months setting up the couple's Gramercy Park digs. The move was a homecoming for Hoge, who was bom and bred in New York but spent almost his entire pre-Ate ws career at Chicago's SunTimes, working his way up from cub reporter. The couple met while Hoge was taking a crash course in management at the Harvard business school. He claims they can't socialize much— "I work too goddamn hard!"—but at least the toil is paying off. After several years' slump, the News's circulation (now almost 1.4 million daily, 1.7 million on Sunday) is rising again, while that of the rival tabloid, Rupert Murdoch's Post, has begun to slip. (The last time Hoge did battle with Murdoch, they were both vying for the Sun-Times. Guess who won.) It's an old-fashioned, down-and-dirty newspaper war, but Hoge won't snipe. As handsome and cool as the man in the Arrowshirt ad, he smiles knowingly and says, "You won't hear any chatter from me about whether a particular paper is any good or not. " Spoken like a gentleman.

Cyndi Stivers