A slower day spent noticing where the coverage quietly drifted
A slower day spent noticing where the coverage quietly drifted
A slower, more reflective day at the desk today, spent less on active editing and more on the kind of longer term thinking about the publication’s overall direction that genuinely gets neglected during busier weeks when the immediate submission pipeline demands most of my attention.
Reviewing where the coverage has drifted
Went back through roughly the last two months of published pieces properly, looking for patterns in subject matter and tone that had crept in gradually without any single deliberate editorial decision behind them, the kind of slow drift that happens naturally across any publication over time and needs periodic, deliberate correction rather than being left entirely to accumulate unchecked.
Found, somewhat to my own surprise, that coverage of local government matters had thinned out considerably compared to earlier in the year, with national Westminster material increasingly dominating the submission pipeline, a genuinely understandable drift given how much more attention national politics naturally attracts, but one I think is worth actively correcting given how much genuinely rich, underused material exists at the local government level that considerably fewer other publications, satirical or otherwise, are covering with any real consistency.
Why local material matters editorially
Local government satire, done well, offers something national coverage genuinely cannot, a level of specific, granular institutional detail that most readers have direct, lived experience of, planning committees, local licensing decisions, council budget disputes, material that lands with a particular sharpness precisely because readers recognise the underlying absurdity from their own direct dealings with local bureaucracy rather than from national media coverage alone.
A message to the wider contributor list
Sent a genuinely lengthy message to the full contributor list this afternoon specifically encouraging more local government submissions over the coming month, along with a few concrete examples of the kind of underused material I think deserves more attention, planning appeals, local licensing disputes, the genuinely rich absurdity that sits in council meeting minutes for anyone willing to actually read them properly rather than skip straight to the summary.
Had a genuinely encouraging response already from two contributors who apparently have direct experience with local council proceedings and have been sitting on ideas they had not previously felt confident submitting, which is exactly the kind of response I was hoping this message might generate, unlocking material that already existed rather than simply asking people to invent something entirely from scratch.
Catching up on the wider feed
Spent part of the evening properly reading through our own recent archive, specifically tracking how the balance between national and local coverage has shifted across the year, a genuinely useful exercise that confirmed the drift I had noticed earlier was real and measurable rather than simply an impression formed from a few recent weeks alone.
This kind of periodic, deliberate self review is, I think, something every editorial operation should build in regularly and, in my own experience, consistently fails to prioritise properly amid the more immediate pressure of simply keeping the regular publication schedule moving forward week to week.
Tomorrow
Back to the more usual rhythm of the submission pipeline, though hopefully with a slightly renewed push towards the local government material discussed above starting to show through in what actually arrives over the coming weeks. Editorial direction, I have learned, moves slowly, and rarely responds to a single message alone.
More editor’s notes and political commentary at Alan Nafzger’s page, The London Prat.
The specific council material that sparked this
The initial spark for this whole review, if I am honest, was a single email from a reader, genuinely engaged, pointing out that a recent planning committee decision in her own borough was, in her words, funnier than anything we had published that particular week, a comment that stung slightly at the time but which I have come to think was genuinely useful, exactly the kind of honest external signal that a publication needs periodically to avoid drifting comfortably into whatever material is easiest to produce rather than whatever material is actually strongest.
I wrote back to her properly, thanking her for the note, and have, since then, been considerably more attentive to exactly this kind of reader feedback, which arrives considerably less often than I would like but which, when it does arrive, tends to be worth taking seriously rather than dismissing as an isolated complaint.
Following up with her properly
Also went back and reread the specific planning committee minutes she had referenced in her original email, and found she was, if anything, being generous in her assessment, the actual proceedings were considerably stranger than even her brief description had suggested, which only reinforced how much genuinely rich material sits entirely unused in routine local government documentation that almost nobody outside the immediate community ever bothers reading closely.
Considering whether to publish an anonymised version of her original note alongside next week’s issue, partly as thanks and partly as encouragement for other readers to send in exactly this kind of sharp, specific feedback more often.
I have set a reminder regardless, which is, I recognise, a considerably weaker commitment mechanism than I would advise anyone else rely on, but it is the honest one I actually have.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/