Media analysis:

The Chaser, Sydney's leading fortnightly satirical newspaper, turned one the other day. The Bug's editor Don Gordon-Brown went along to the birthday celebrations and filed this report.

The Chaser touts itself in on-line advertising as Australia’s only satirical paper.
While this is no doubt based on the very understandable assumption that nothing else of any merit ever happens outside of Olympics-smitten Sydeny, the claim is more than a little galling for all the people who have worked hard to put out The Bug for the past 11 years.
Now if the young turks behind The Chaser had cleverly marketed their baby as “Australia’s only regular satirical paper,” we would have had no beef.
Nor would there have been any tut-tutting or head shaking if they’d claimed it was "Australia’s only satirical newspaper that looks likes it’s put out by people who might one day make a quid out of it”. Even "Australia's only satirical newspaper that knows how to milk publicity" would have been fine. Any number of epithets would have passed muster.
Sadly, "Australia’s unfunniest satirical paper " would also suffice, if recent net versions and the hardcopy available at The Chaser’s first birthday bash in a Paddo, Sydney pub are any guide.
One of The Chaser’s biggest problems is that it’s not exactly a thigh slapper on even its best days. Some issues seem to be trying too hard to live up to the paper's self-effacing motto, Striving for Mediocrity in a World of Excellence.
And please don’t think that this assessment is based on the opinion of one bitter and twisted old Brisbanite pissed off by the arrogance and smug self-assertivenes of the stary-eyed Sydney set.
The Bug’s core senior writers were asked to peruse The Chaser I brought home and to a man and no women they said it was very “so so”. I then asked them to re-read several recent hard copies of The Bug and they rolled around the office floor laughing uncontrollably as I expected they would. I’ve decided to keep them on. Besides, I like their pay rates.
And before this criticism is also charged with accusations of sour grapes because we’ve never been able to attract the glitterati of Sydney society to our birthday parties and we haven't been smart enough to think about charging $10 at the door, some qualifications about The Chaser’s merits.
Point one is that the creative lads are spreading themselves too thin.
I read somewhere – it may have been The Australian’s media section on Thursdays that devotes itself almost entirely to what's happening around the media world – of Sydney – that these likely lads get together on a Sunday arvo with a cask of cheap plonk and spend some hours thrashing out their lead stories for each issue and getting mightily trashed in the process.
Perhaps a better quality brain juice would help their deliberations but the problem remains that putting out satire every two weeks is probably not so much a difficult task but an impossible one for three or four core people.
I think I can say without fear of contradiction from myself that The Bug’s hard-copy versions are funnier than The Chaser’s, but then again we don’t put out a hard-copy Bug all that frequently and can resort to a sort of Best of the Net Bug compilation. Our net versions only come out every month or so, and even then there's not as much in them as a hardcopy The Chaser.
And this might gall the clever young minds behind "Microsoft Break-Up! Yoko Ono to Blame" but I think The Bug has writers with brighter imaginations for a satirical twist on stories. My little team certainly has a much sharper political bent, but that might have come with advanced age and chronic cynicism.
Much of The Chaser hardcopy in hand misses the mark: that page one Microsoft splash is exceptionally weak and one suspects they put it there only to try to seek some international celebrity. Inside are some lame political satire - Beazley backing spine research because he doesn’t have one, and the like. Some of the humour is pretty under-graduate, which is a scandalous thing to say considering The Bug’s last hard-copy cover.
One of The Chaser's dilemmas - and perhaps it's as much a strength as a weakness - is that its brave little band of satirists could be locked into the fog of political correctness that has enveloped polite Sydney society of recent years.
Like H. G. Nelson and Roy Slaven when a particular patter is not getting the laughs, The Bug has no problems resorting to the occasional botty joke or bodily fluid emission.
Perhaps it's to their credit that The Chaser crew stick to more esoteric mind games - but it also makes it harder to get a laugh, especially when you're dedicating most of a page to a story entitled Ethiopian drought caused by sub-optimal I Ching, says feng shui experts. That rib-tickler almost had me spilling my chardonnay. Okay, that's a bit unfair. There was some cleverness in it, but like many Chaser articles it was stretched too far for its own good.
There are a few other stumbling blocks ahead for The Chaser, even if Sydney glitterati like John Singleton continue to throw a reported $10,000 their way every now and then with a terse "Keep up the Good Work; I Couldn't".
The Chaser crew have eschewed a free throwaway concept, and each time I’m out delivering The Bug from now on, I'll marvel at their decision.
But here’s the Catch 22. The Bug does get some advertising dollars because we print 6000. I’m told The Chaser sells more than 1000 - perhaps 2000 copies each issue - but taking a half cut of a $2 cover price is not going to cover printing costs, let alone other production outlays, some wages and the most important of all, some additional contributions to widen the talent pool and give The Chaser a real chance to be around for its second birthday.
And no advertising rep, no matter how big the tits (woops, see what I meant earlier!) is going to sell up a storm of column centimetres on a circulation of 2000.
The key is, of course, increasing The Chaser's circulation but to do that, it's got to be genuinely funny and give patrons their $2 worth.
If The Chaser stays at its present standard, it will sadly become something the lads and their parents who helped fund the dream will be able to feel good about when they’re in later life earning a real wage in a totally different profession.