EDITORIAL:

When my co-publisher and I uploaded a post yesterday poking fresh fun at Lord Downer of Pout House – isn’t he the gift that keeps giving! – it marked our 4000th post since we decided to resurrect The Bug as an online-only satire site some five years ago.

The Bug remains this nation’s oldest and least profitable satire publication and we’re mighty proud of the effort we’ve put in over these past years.

Can I be perfectly Don. Our readership figures have grown very unsteadily since our relaunch and I’m sure my co-writer agrees that we sometimes – oh, who we trying to kid – we often wonder if the effort we’re putting in is worth it.

We have written and uploaded at least two stories each and every day of each and every calendar year since our relaunch so yes, that probably makes us certifiably insane. But the two of us have been honing our satirical skills since we launched The Bug as a Brisbane-based hardcopy satirical rag in 1989. Put simply, The Bug is what we do.

We immodestly think it’s at the very least the equal of The Chaser, The Shovel and the Betoota Advocate.

We think we are without peer when it comes to holding this nation’s woeful mainstream media to account. Ditto for our politicians across the political divide.

So please continue to enjoy our offerings. We’ll keep at it until the white van pulls up outside and the men in white lead us away.

Don Gordon-Brown

PS: Happened to be in Sydeney around 1994 – five years or so after The Bug began with many thousands of loss-leading copies splashed all over the joint at least monthly from what’s left of my memory – and went along to the launch of The Chaser’s print-media newspaper, with Andrew Denton as MC. Threw them a hundred bucks to help them on their way. Under the paper’s masthead was the slogan: “Australia’s only satire newspaper!” or words to that effect. Still, that’s Sydeney for you, isn’t it? If it doesn’t happen in Sydeney, it simply does not happen.