not sure if this is worth a sigh or not.

Remember how the Christian newspaper I'd been writing for since the late 
'80s (though only consistently since the summer of '92) was shut down a 
few months ago?  And how, with that shutdown, I lost the one steady gig 
that I've been able to fit into my stay-at-home-parent schedule?

At the time, a number of the people on that paper's staff were hired by 
one of that paper's former publishers to start a brand-new monthly paper 
-- but instead of focusing on news and current events, it's more like a 
glorified advertising supplement, with peppy columns by local pastors and 
the like.  (They're calling it a "lifestyle magazine", but it's still 
printed on newsprint, so I still think of it as a paper.)

No one ever asked me about writing on film for the new paper, though, and 
I have to say it didn't bother me too much.  The new paper's website said 
(and still says; it hasn't been updated since they actually started 
putting issues out) that the paper would feature "current Christian book, 
music and movie releases", and if their focus was going to be on 
"Christian movies" rather than movies, period, I wasn't interested.

(As it happens, the original newspaper had two music columnists -- one of 
whom, a guy who had some success as a local CCM performer 20 years ago, 
focused on CCM; the other of whom, a guy who has a *huge* music collection 
and has performed with lots of well-known secular musicians over the 
years, focused on "real" music.  And guess what?  The CCM guy writes for 
the new paper and the other guy does not.  Oh, and the CCM guy isn't a 
very good writer; I say this as one who had to edit some of his stories 
way back when.  But I was told they kept giving him reviews to write 
because he was available and the readers wanted coverage of CCM, so...)

So.  Anyway.  Three issues of the new paper have been released now.  And 
each one has featured a very different kind of movie coverage.

The first issue featured an interview with a documentary filmmaker -- an 
interview that just happened to be conducted by the *producer* of his 
latest film (not that the paper gave any hint of this).  I actually didn't 
realize at first that the writer of the article was also the film's 
producer; however, I *did* recognize her name because (a) she interviewed 
me for one of her own documentaries several years ago, and (b) she has 
written dozens of press releases for a local Christian university over the 
years, and, back when I used to edit the old paper's website, I kept 
telling my co-workers that, as good as her writing was, we really 
shouldn't be running press releases as if they were news stories.  So, 
when I saw *this* article, I did a quick Google to see if it had 
originally been written as one of that university's press releases ... and 
instead, I found an "alumni" page noting that she, an alumnus of this 
university, had actually *produced* this film.  So, there's that.

The second issue was a bit more dispiriting, because this one featured 
something resembling an actual review -- but an amateurishly-written one, 
by a local pastor, of True Grit, a film that had come out nearly four 
months earlier.  (And when I say "amateurishly-written", I mean it's the 
kind of piece in which someone wastes words saying "I turned to my friend 
in the theatre and said, 'Hey, do you know what music they're playing?'" 
It reminded me of the stuff I used to edit in my student-paper days.)

Even worse, the True Grit article was paired with another article, by the 
same pastor, on "why" Christians should see and/or review movies.  It 
seemed to imply that they were starting a regular feature with this guy -- 
but the kind of feature in which talk of films gives the pastor an excuse 
to quote whatever Bible verses the movie reminded him of.  I was never 
interested in writing *those* kinds of articles, so if that's what this 
new "lifestyles magazine" was looking for, then it's just as well that 
they never asked me to write for them.  But still.  Kinda irksome.

And now, as of a week ago, the third issue is out.  And this time they're 
running a story off the wire (the Religion News Service wire, to be 
precise) about Soul Surfer, a movie that came out over a month ago and had 
already received a fair bit of pre-release buzz in other venues.

So, make of that what you will.

Certainly the focus of the reviews so far seems to be on films that the 
reader might find "affirmative".  I highly doubt they'll ever run anything 
like, say, the review of Inglourious Basterds that I wrote where I 
wrestled with the place of violence in the Judeo-Christian tradition. 
And it remains to be seen whether they will ever cover foreign or indie 
films that aren't produced by local press-release writers.

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