Chances are good that  "Love Actually" will have another viewing at my house again this week, since that's our family holiday tradition. Here's a great clip from my favorite end-of-the-year film.

Newspaper journalists are inclined to think they are hard-bitten cynics, but the reality is that most so-called cynics are just romantics who've been disappointed too many times. Between that and the black humor that tends to prevail at newspapers, journalists are perfect subjects for rom coms.

This list started out as a roster of 18 rom coms with a female print journalist as a significant character. But then my daughter got involved and added a few. The last several are courtesy of her and my wife.

We're talking about movies since 1980, so we can't include the greatest example, Rosalind Russell in "His Girl Friday." It's off by just, oh, 40 years. To be quite honest, I've only seen five of these last 14 films. Only "Hitch" and "Tamara Drewe" (a fine film, by the way) are memorable to me, but I'd like to see a couple of the others. If you missed the first nine films on the list, you can find them here.

10. "Scoop" (2006) - Haven't seen it, but Sondra Pransky (Scarlett Johansson) is a journalism student who has an affair with a murder suspect.  
11. "I Love Trouble" (1994) - Another one I haven't seen, but it sounds like the classic battle of perky vs. experienced, set on a journalism stage with Julia Roberts and Nick Nolte. You can probably guess which one is perky.
12. "Sex and the City" (2008) - The movie version of a TV show that I found frustratingly obnoxious. Maybe because I'm a guy, albeit a chick flick guy. Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) is the sex writer for a New York paper.
13. "Just One of the Guys" (1985) - Apparently a kind of cult classic, but I haven't seen it. It features an college journalist who goes so far undercover, she's pretending to be a guy. I don't think there's a single actor in this film I've ever heard of.
14. "My Best Friend's Wedding" (1997)- Julia Roberts plays a food critic who tries to put the bite on her pal, who's fixing to get married to someone else.
15. "Tamara Drewe" (2010) - Tamara Drewe is a London columnist who returns to the countryside where she grew up. She has affairs with an older local writer and a childish rock star, but her true love is the one who liked her before she got her nose job.
16. "Confessions of a Shopaholic" (2009) - Isla Fisher plays a financial journalist who apparently thinks 12 Steps is enough to decide on buying a new pair of shoes. I haven't seen it yet, so you can't say I'm a full-fledged Isla-holic.
17. "He Said, She Said" (1991) - A comedic "Rashomon" with sparring journalists, played by Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth Perkins.
18. "Heartburn" (1986) - One of the greats of romantic comedy writers, Nora Ephron, apparently put her own life into this story, building on the breakup of her marriage to Watergate reporting legend Carl Bernstein.
19. "Marley & Me" (2008) - I'll be darned, Jennifer Aniston plays a reporter again. (See "The Bounty Hunter" in yesterday's list.) This time, she's the female half of a married reporter couple that moves from the snow to Florida to find work, sun and a dog that will make them famous.
20. "Hitch" (2005) - Can't believe I forgot that Eva Mendes plays a gossip columnist in this fun romp with Will Smith.
21. "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" (2003) - Even worse that I almost forgot this one, given that I just watched it a couple of days ago. Maybe it's because of how annoying the ploy is when she's going to extremes to get rid of him.
22. "The Holiday" (2006) - Kate Winslet is a weddings writer driven from London to California by the engagement of the guy she thought was in love with her. A nice film with some good "meet cute."
23. "13 going on 30" (2004) - By this time, I feel like this list is 13 movies going on 30. Our last is a silly age-switch film, though Jennifer Garner and Mark Ruffalo are good in it. Garner's character, Jenna, is bewitched at 13 and wakes up to find out she works at Poise, a fashion magazine.

Movie suggestions came from Maija-Liisa Young, Vanessa Price Martin, Dale Stark, Dee Dee Gunther, Tricia Stirling, Melissa Nappan, Ken Chavez, Sam Delson, Brandy Tuzon Boyd, Erika Chavez Bleszinski, Mara Stark-Alcalá, Dan Nguyen, Pablo Roman-Alcalá, Bob Rebach, Ian Cahir, LaRae Pfeffen. Barb Hennelly and Carla Meyer, who knows more about films than I ever will. Of course, that also probably applies to the rest of the list, too. Thanks for all the suggestions. If you don't see yours, it means I didn't think it fit the rules. You can complain about it in the comments.

Why are there so many movies where the characters are journalists? It just might be because journalists tend to be writers and observers, and that's pretty good preparation for writing a movie script. Script writers (so I imagine) make more money than journalists, so it's something we journalists can aspire to when we're tired of being poor and are ready to sell our souls. (Scriptwriting job offers to: Contact the Guy.) Once grown up, the former journalists remember that someone once said you should write what you know. Voila: "The Front Page." (To name just one of the earliest examples of the journalism movie genre, written by a newsman.)

There are so many journalism movies, my list is going to leave out TV journalists. That means good-bye,  "Groundhog Day." That means good-bye, "Groundhog Day." We'll leave out serious films, so: "All the President's Men": Expletive deleted. And I'll omit movies with only male journalists - Run away, "Runaway Bride." The list will be more manageable if it's restricted to romantic comedies since 1980 where the woman is a print journalist. You'd think that would be limited, but I wound up with so many, I'm going to stretch them out over a couple of days. Here's the first half of my list, in no particular order. The second part has 14 more films. 

1. "Sleepless in Seattle" (1993) - Being a journalist gives Annie (Meg Ryan) a pretext for hunting down a guy who sounds too romantic to be true. In fact, I'm sure if Sam (Tom Hanks) were for real, he'd be eagerly reading Chick Flick Guy every day. (Even if he denigrates "An Affair to Remember.")
2. "When Harry Met Sally" (1989) - What do you know? Meg was a journalist before "Sleepless." It comes out in a couple of throwaway lines in this film. First she's studying journalism and then becomes a journalist. Oh, really?
3. "Kissing Jessica Stein" (2001) - Jessica is a copy-editor for a fictional New York periodical of uncertain frequency. Her boss is her college boyfriend. Her love is someone entirely different. See my review here.
4. "Going the Distance" (2010) - Drew Barrymore is a New York journalism intern, Stanford journalism student and finally (and most unrealistically) a writer for the SF Chronicle. She pursues a long-distance relationship with the guy she met that summer in New York.
5. "The Bounty Hunter" (2010) - Haven't seen it but it looks like just the sort of bad movie I'd enjoy. Jennifer Aniston is an investigative reporter. Uh-huh.
6. "Definitely, Maybe" (2010) - Will (Ryan Reynolds) has three loves in this film. Summer (Rachel Weisz) is the journalist who single-handedly topple's Will's boss, a political candidate, sending Will into a downward spiral that eventually leads to love. With someone else.
7. "The Devil Wears Prada" (2006) - Anne Hathaway is Andy (sometimes Emily to her boss), the new girl at the Vogue-esque fashion mag who dreams of being a "serious journalist." If she only knew.
8. "Never Been Kissed" (1999) - Forget what I said about script writers writing what they know. This movie apparently features a newspaper copy editor (Drew Barrymore, again) with an office and an assistant. This is laughable. You'd almost expect to see a messenger owl in a movie so clearly based in fantasy.
9. "The Paper" (1994) - This isn't quite a romantic comedy, but colleagues would kill me if I didn't include it. And Michael Keaton's pregnant love (the lovely Marisa Tomei) is a former reporter. Glenn Close plays his boss.

By the way, I didn't come up with all of these on my own. I had some help from some great, real-life women journalists, and some guy reporters, and some random interlopers. The helpers are named at the end of tomorrow's post.