People send us their newspapers and magazines. Sometimes, we review them.
The Times of Acadiana, February 19, 2009
Whatever Cody Daigle is earning, Iâm sure itâs not enough. As the sole masthead writer for Louisianaâs Times of Acadiana, a content-light and ad-heavy free weekly, he seems to be responsible for over three quarters of its February 19 issue. And Iâm suspicious about how many people helped compile the âstaff reportsâ bylined article offering Oscar party tips like âmake dishes themed to your favorite Oscar-winning movies.â (Liver with fava beans and a nice Chianti, perhaps?)
Mr. Daigle, whose copy passed my technical muster with flying colors, clearly has the pendantâs curse. The Timesâs âHot Linksâ feature, a curated roundup of four blog recommendations, includes two grammar-snark sites, one of which is UnnecessaryQuotes.com, dedicated to chronicling ill-deployed and meaning-distorting quotation marks. The layout staff managed to keep ads with such offending usage away from that spread, but I can only imagine Daigle shuddering while reading the classified encouraging readers to dial ââ235-ROOFââ or while glancing the exterior photo of Popâs Black Pot (restaurant review, page thirty-nine) with its sign half-heartedly claiming ââGood âOl Cajun Cooking.ââ
The highlight of page fourteen is a quarter-page ad for a local branch of the Stanford Groupâyes, that Stanford Groupâwoefully promising to help clients âfulfill financial goals with a long-term view towards preserving wealth.â As that time capsule would suggest, the issue under review is a bit stale. But thatâs lucky, because it came out in the midst of Februaryâs Mardi Gras, and its event listings offer distant readers a peek at how locals view the fun.
Take, for example, the âcourirs and bouchiers.â One listing for the former promises a childrenâs âchicken chaseâ; of the later, the Times notes that âAmong Cajuns anything can be a celebration, including the butchering of a hog.â A short article offering recommendations for readers planning the two-hour trek into urban New Orleans from the Timesâs Lafayette distribution area strongly advises the use of public transportation upon reaching the city, and makes the unsettling suggestion that abstaining motorists organize their own convoys: âIf you must drive to where you need to be, travel in packsâŠâ
Notice must also be drawn to the giveawayâs film section, where Trey Domingue offers two write-ups of weekend releases accompanied by a letter grade âprediction.â A cursory reading makes it clear that our reviewer has not seen the films in question, leaving this reader to conclude that whatâs really being reviewed are trailers, publicity packets, or other reviews. Havenât we learned our lesson about the dangers of derivatives?
Of one such flick, the tale of two young men who attend cheerleader camp, Domingue writes that âFired Up at least seems to have taken the teen and âraunchyâ comedy sub-genres and blended them together to create a potentially funny hitâ before dialing down that hedged bet and honestly admitting that he âmay be wrong about the whole âblending thingâ mentioned above.â
I can only hope that, by next week, readers got Domingueâs post-screening thoughts. And that Cody found a moment to chat with Trey about his âraunchyâ quotation marks. âClint Hendler
Sojourners Magazine, April 2009
Sojourners is a Christian magazine, and, according to its cover, itâs interested in âfaith, politics, and culture.â In tone and subject matter, Sojourners often feels like the magazine embodiment of NPRâs Speaking of Faith, only slightly more preachy, and more narrowly Christian.
The magazine is strongest when covering social justice issues, illuminating topics frequently neglected by mainstream outlets. A short explanatory feature in the front of the book explains the shortcomings of a commonly cited statistic, the poverty level:
Our current way of measuring poverty sets the poverty line equal to three times a subsistence food budget. In 1955 (the best data available when the measure was set in 1964) the average family spent one-third of its income on food; âthree times foodâ became the official formulaâand remains unchanged to this day, except for annual updating for inflation. If your familyâs pre-tax cash income is below the threshold, youâre counted as poor.
There are many problems with this. Compared to a half-century ago, the price of food today is much less important than housing and utility prices. Medical expenses have grown; child-care expenses have increased as single parents work more.
Hereâs the most important problem, however. In the last four decades, the U.S. has greatly expanded help for lower-income families, including food stamps, housing programs, medical care assistance, and changes in tax laws to benefit the poor. But our current poverty statistics are based only on familiesâ cash income, and none of these programs affect cash incomeâso none of them affect the official poverty rate.
Another article focuses on the deplorable conditions faced by illegal immigrants held in maximum security facilities around the country: âCentersâ substandard conditions have been partly to blame for nearly 70 detainee deaths in the last five years. Immigrant advocacy groups, human rights organizations, and the media have widely criticized ICEâs detention systemâa $1.6 billion industry funded by taxpayersâfor being unaccountable and poorly overseen.â
But Sojourners stumbles somewhat when it covers the Christian movement itself. The cover story, âNashvilleâs New Grooveâ documents recent charity projects by Christian country artists: â[Derek] Webb is one of a growing number of Nashville-based Christian musicians who are combining their faith with a commitment to social justice. Rather than simply playing benefit concerts or becoming celebrity spokespeople for charity, theyâre taking a hands-on role in serving some of the poorest people on the planet and advocating for social change.â
Yet the reporting feels thin, like the result of one or two interviews, with lots of showing, not telling. And the focus on the musiciansâ work, instead of the needs of those theyâre serving, reads more like a celebratory profile than a careful examination of the developing worldâs needs. Which is fineâthereâs nothing wrong with celebratory profilesâbut nowhere near as rewarding as the magazineâs harder-hitting stuff. âKatia Bachko
IQ magazine
IQ, as a “magazine of ideasââits pages slickly designed; its topics of intellectual and aesthetic inquiry (“Media & Culture” and “Music & Performance,” among them) relatively erudite; its layout peppered with nuggets of fibrous wisdom courtesy of Prominent Historical Thinkers; its articles, despite their promise of “original thinking with an emphasis on the visual,” mere synthetic summaries of books available for “Further Reading” (read: sale) elsewhere; its overall aesthetic, therefore, more Cliffs Notes-meets-Amazon than New York Review of Books; its overall sensibility, therefore, almost painfully self-conscious about the appearance of its own IQâis a publication that is probably best left to those who think themselves smarter than they are. âMegan Garber
America, March 23, 2009
The March 23 issue of America, the national Catholic weekly published by the Jesuits, has a funny photograph on its cover that perplexed me for a good five minutes (and then another five minutes when I was drawn irresistibly back to it). It features a little Toto-like dog sticking its head out from behind the folds of a fur coat. Below the furry one is a pair of pointy green leather boots. Now, having seen many a little dog toted around by denizens of Fifth Ave., I thought it might be a feature on wealthy Catholics, or possibly one on pet ethics. A co-worker asked if it was some Dorothy kind of thing?
As it turns out, the feature it illustrates is an op-ed-like piece about animal welfare; its main message is that concern for animals is not âakin to idolatry,â and that it doesnât âdisplace God.â The starkest expression of that argument: âMore to the point, when one person chooses to abstain from meat derived from animals raised in unnatural conditions, while a second demands to be served only the tenderest, juiciest cuts of sirloin, it is not the first who is raising up idols.â The piece sticks to its message, but it would have benefited from some actual focus on what Americaâs readers might actually do. In asking for changed perceptions (writer Kate Blake reminds that itâs not âwhat that chicken or calf or rabbit can do for meâ) or renewed commitment (quoting the Catechism: âManâs dominion⊠requires a religious respect for the integrity of creationâ), a bit of service journalism might have proved most useful.
The most interesting portion of the issue for non-regular readers of America is, by far, the Books & Culture section, which reviews (and reflects on) books and art from a Catholic perspective: from a Lenten meditation on English painter Stanley Spencerâs âChrist Carrying the Cross,â to a review of Massimo Francoâs book documenting the relationship between the Vatican and the U.S., to a level-headed review of a book that investigates how health outcomes might be influenced by faith. The reviews are short, but written by those with relevant expertise, authoritative and pleasurable to read. âJane Kim
The Editors are the staffers of the Columbia Journalism Review.