Everyday life is chronicled in our venerable weekly newspaper, the Gazette & Advertiser, ‘serving Whimsey and the other flatland villages since 1847’. It’s a publication of few ambitions and even fewer readers; we read it to see if we’re in it and, if so, to check that Frank has spelt our names correctly. A local paper is supposed to reflect the tenor of village life, but the Gazette & Advertiser has lost its way over the years. On how many other newspapers would a story be spiked for being “too interesting”?
Some of the stories almost write themselves. Every year Frank begins his report on the Whimsey & District Agricultural Show in exactly the same way: “Torrential rain failed to dampen the enthusiasm of the crowds who flocked to the showground last Saturday”. Over the years Frank has developed the unerring knack of elevating the dull and the uneventful into headline stories, and burying anything of genuine significance towards the bottom of page five, next to the results of the Womens' Institute's Most Exciting Tea-towel Competition. Week by week Frank takes a long hard look at what makes Whimsey shine in the presence of its less exalted neighbours, and ignores it altogether.
After all this time Frank is part of the furniture: so firmly ensconced in the editorial chair that some days - after one pie too many - he has to be prised out of it with a crowbar. Journalism courses through his veins; even his conversation can be measured in column inches. He’s spent more years than he cares to remember, stabbing one-fingered at the keys of his ancient Remington typewriter like a demented woodpecker. When a computer appeared on his desk one day, he tried to make it work. But the internet baffled him, and his emails remained resolutely earthbound, like pinioned birds. Fortunately, the CD tray was just the right shape and size for holding a doughnut.
The people Frank writes about every week are the very same people who read the paper. There isn't much call, in a place the size of Whimsey, for scoops, exclusives and salacious headlines. Even the village’s recent “crime wave” was just a few local felons, selling contraband snuff, forging library tickets and rustling geese: not so much a crime wave as a crime ripple. Revelations about nefarious goings-on might briefly attract a few extra readers. But what's the point of upsetting everybody, just to double the circulation? Readers and advertisers are the most important ingredients of a local paper, though not necessarily in that order. And if Frank’s readers were ever to develop an unhealthy interest in kiss-'n’-tell exposés, they'd be unlikely to salivate over the paper's more mundane headlines, such as this week's offering: Whimsey Man Dies of Natural Causes.
No comments:
Post a Comment