The Lakewood Church service is a glorious spectacle of marketing genius, a happy marriage of television know-how, motivational speaking and Jesus, Houston Press reporter Jennifer Mathieu writes. At a time when mainline Protestant churches are hemorrhaging members and are desperate to understand why, this self-described charismatic, nondenominational congregation has grown so rapidly since Joel Osteen took over that church leaders have ambitious plans to move the whole operation into Compaq Center in 2003. Some business and city government leaders aren't too happy about turning the public arena into a church, so Lakewood has come under a level of scrutiny that it is unaccustomed to, given that it has gone out of its way to avoid political involvement.
The Creative Loafing chain is consolidating its entire layout, design and production operation in Atlanta. The move assures consistency of appearance and quality of design, and also will save the chain’s five papers as much as $22 per page, says CL’s CEO Ben Eason. Eight or nine jobs were eliminated but all affected employees were offered jobs in Atlanta, where the production staff will number about 24.
His name is Dan Malone, and he won his Pulitzer in 1992 at the Dallas Morning News, reporting on abuses of power by Texas law enforcement officials. Malone joins an editorial staff headed by another ex-Morning News Pulitzer winner, Gayle Reaves. Meanwhile, ex-Houston Presser Anthony Mariani has accepted a position as the Weekly’s arts and entertainment editor.
The Paper, an alternative weekly out of Grand Rapids, Mich., has ceased publication, although there are indications that it is "retooling to return as a monthly". When it became an AAN member in 1998, the Admissions Committee deemed The Paper, "the most encouraging of the new applicants."
Does the alternative newspaper business have a problem in the back of the book? A lengthy disquisition on the subject in Fort Worth Weekly doesn't draw any conclusions, but reporter Jeff Prince finds an "evolution" in the alt-weekly universe, with many papers "reducing the number of adult ads and restricting their size, display, and content."
Derided as the province of teenaged boys and college stoners, video games have always gotten a bad rap from the press. But last year the industry outgrossed U.S. movie ticket sales, and new and more realistic games are appearing every week. LA Weekly's Alec Bemis makes a convincing case that the new generation of machines and games are creating the first new medium of the 21st Century, offering hyperreality and interactivity rather than traditional media's alienation and passive viewing experiences.
